


Through A Glass Darkly

by atamascolily



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Ach-To (Star Wars), Alderaani Culture, Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dimension Travel, Family Bonding, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Trees, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Gen, Jedi Temple (Star Wars), Jedi Training (Star Wars), Lampshade Hanging, Lanai Caretakers, Mirrors, Parallel Universes, Parallels, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Skywalker Family Feels, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Fix-It, Vacation, Yavin 4, obscure Legends references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2020-01-04 12:51:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18344045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Luke, Mara, and Ben Skywalker take a family vacation to a mysterious planet in the Unknown Regions rumored to be home to the earliest known Jedi Temple. When Ben stumbles across a secret cave infused with the Dark Side, the last thing he expects to find inside is a woman with his cousin's face and his mother's lightsaber.Meanwhile, Rey came to Ach-To hoping to train with Luke Skywalker, figure out her place in the galaxy, and find her parents. But she never anticipated anything like this...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to AO3 users evilmouse for directing me to maps of Ach-To so the geography actually makes sense!

The remote whirred once, then fell silent. Even with the blast helmet pulled over his face, Ben Skywalker knew exactly where it was, and when it would strike again. The problem was getting his lightsaber up in time to block it--

He swung too far to hit the bolt when it came, but quick backpedaling saved him from a direct hit. This maneuver had no effect on from the _second_ remote coming up behind him, and he was shot twice before he realized his mistake. 

By then, he'd had enough. Even though it was contrary to the spirit of the exercise, he wrested control of both remotes and flung them to the ground, where they sparked and twitched helplessly. Only then did he extinguish the lightsaber and remove the blast helmet. 

"Nice work," his mother said from her place at the dejarik table. Mara Jade was not the sort to offer unnecessary praise, so Ben knew her approval of his unorthodox solution was sincere. "I did that once to your father in a training exercise once. Ripped that damn pod he was controlling right out of the sky rather than put up with it for one second more." 

"And you did it well. _Both_ of you. As I've said before, it's very difficult to split one's attention in that way against two opponents. Not to mention the amount of creativity under fire it requires." Luke Skywalker shook a cascade of bleached-blond hair out of his eyes and tapped the dejarik board, sending his holographic nexu right into his wife's Kintan Strider. An angry battle ensued, from which the nexu emerged victorious. "Your move, dear." 

His mother snorted. "Huh. Didn't think you'd fall for the old Kintan Strider death gambit." 

"What do you mean--oh!" A second later, it was all over as her Mantellian Savrip went for the kill. 

His father shook his head in dismay at the ensuing slaughter, and switched the board off. "I should have known you'd pull a stunt like that." 

"Winning isn't everything," Mara Jade Skywalker said sweetly as she rose from the table, "but it's satisfying nonetheless. Isn't that right, Ben?" she added with a wink. 

Ben nodded soberly. Like his mother, he played to win, even if in his case, his opponent was an automated pair of remotes. 

"Something wrong?" his father asked into the silence. "Don't worry about mastering the lightsaber techniques yet; that'll come with time. The lightsaber may be a potent symbol and a useful tool, but there's far, far more to being a Jedi than a fancy laser sword. Your instincts are in the right place, and that's what matters." 

"No," his mother said softly. "That's not it. It's something else. What is it, Ben?" 

Ben sighed. The problem with having two powerful Jedi as parents was that it was impossible to hide what he felt around them--and equally impossible to dodge their inevitable scrutiny. He hadn't minded so much when he was younger, but he had to get better at shielding from them if he ever wanted privacy. 

"Why am I here?" he wondered aloud. "It's not like you need me on this expedition at all." 

"We haven't had a family vacation in years," his father said, as if that explained everything. "And I thought you wanted an adventure. This is it. Cutting-edge Jedi action right here."

"Or maybe not," his mother piped in. "There's no way to tell until we get there. For all we know, this Ach-To place could be a desolate rockball in the middle of nowhere. Karrde's informant wasn't exactly reliable." 

Two weeks earlier, Uncle Karrde -- one of Ben's many adopted relatives from his mother's smuggler days -- had been approached by a man with a map marking what he claimed was the the ancestral home of the Jedi. The document in question was so old it was made of paper - _paper_! -- and the man claimed it had been passed down as a relic for generations in the archives of a cloistered religious commune. Of course Uncle Karrde had informed Ben's parents right away so they could investigate--bringing Ben along for the ride. 

His father shrugged. "Artoo found a similar diagram in some old files in the Imperial Palace, so _someone_ thought the coordinates worth recording there, too. But it's the Unknown Regions. Anything could be out here." 

"I guess I feel... superfluous, that's all," Ben said, finally able to put his disquiet into words. "You two are so good there's not much for me left to do except get in the way and screw things up." 

"That's not true," Luke Skywalker said, looking at his son with compassion. Ben twitched, unable to meet his gaze. "You just haven't found it yet. Give it time." 

Ben's protest was interrupted by the alarm announcing their arrival in the Ach-To system. As they dropped into ordinary space, a tiny blue speck appeared in the distance, growing larger and larger as the _Jade Shadow_ approached. 

"You really think this desolate backwater is the ancient home of the Jedi Order?" his mother asked, looking down on the planet with distaste. Having grown up on Coruscant, she had cosmopolitan expectations and judged accordingly. "I didn't expect it to be so... boring."

"If it's a trap, it's an odd one. I'm picking up a few life forms, but no sign of any tech," his father said, settling down into the pilot's chair. "Looks like any starfaring civilization picked up and moved out a long time ago." He grinned. "Let's go down and see if they left anything behind." 

***

The _Jade Shadow_ turned smoothly through Ach-To's as Luke brought her in for a landing on one of the many rocky islands scattered like jagged teardrops across the surface of the vast ocean. Were it not for the coordinates Artoo had uncovered in the old files, he wouldn't have picked this particular island out of the thousands in an archipelago that stretched across the northern half of the planet. 

As they drew closer, two massive peaks, linked by a low saddle, rose seven hundred meters out of the water, dominated by bare rocky cliffs and exposed stone, with smatterings of low plants in sheltered patches where enough soil had accumulated to support them. Landing a starship was tricky on such steep terrain, but there was a fairly level patch at the base of one peak that was large enough to accommodate the _Jade Shadow_ without running afoul of high tide. A stairway carved from the rocks up over the ridge to the east was proof they were not the first visitors to use the place as a makeshift docking bay. 

"Well," Luke said, as the ship cruised to a halt, "welcome to the Unknown Regions, everyone. Time to see what Ach-To has in store for us." 

Three things assailed them as they stepped off the ship: the cutting wind off the ocean, the stinging salt spray that came along it, and the raucuous cries as a thousand portly sea-birds descended on them from the air. 

"PORG! PORG! PORG!"

"What _are_ those things?" Mara said, waving her hands in front of her to scatter them. 

Luke's initial reaction wasn't charitable either. The avians were fuzzy and rotund, with white bellies and black and tan backs, but their faces were dominated by a pair of eerily human black eyes. While they were capable of flight, their bulk made them poor fliers, and they settled on the ground with indignant squawks a safe distance from the invaders. Their stubby, dark-scaled feet were devoid of any fur or feathers, with three strong toes that allowed them to cling to the steep cliffs like limpets, and walk up and down sheer walls of rock. Every motion was accompanied by the same endless squeals: "PORG! PORG! PORG!" 

"Sounds like they call themselves porgs," Ben called from behind them. "That's as good a name as any for them. They're kinda cute." 

"In a grotesque sort of way," Mara sniffed, unmoved. Luke fought to hold back his smile. 

There was no escaping the porgs. They were everywhere: soaring in the air, perched on rocks, the stairway carved into the side of the mountain, or any surface that wasn't already occupied with something else. Fortunately, they were easily startled and fled as the three humans made their way up the stairwell and down the other side. 

There they discovered the further evidence of habitation: a village of domed huts constructed entirely out of intricately stacked stones, with no mortar to hold them together. The island's twin peaks and the intervening saddle that connected them loomed above them, punctuated only by a second stairway that arched over the saddle and disappeared down the other side. 

Much to Luke's frustration, a diligent search revealed all of the buildings to be empty. Worse, there were no indications that whoever had lived here had any ties to the Jedi. 

"These huts are in pretty good shape considering no one lives here," Mara said in his ear as they emerged from the last hut into the open. "No porgs nests, either. I wonder--" 

"Here comes the welcoming committee," Ben said, pointing towards the stairway to the saddle. Luke looked up to see a a cluster of bipedal aliens descending into the village, clucking excitedly among themselves as they approached. 

"I hope we're not intruding," Luke said, pulling out a translator box and handing it to his wife. 

"Shoulda brought Threepio with us," Ben noted soberly.

"I can handle this," Mara said, tucking the box into her belt and threading one set of wires up to her ear. Such an unsophisticated interpreter was no substitute for a working protocol droid, but it worked well enough give a representative samples of a given language. Coupled with Mara's quick wits and practiced negotiating skills, Luke had no doubt whatsoever she'd make it work. 

"He wouldn't have wanted to come," Luke said to Ben as Mara went forward to meet their alien visitors. "Can you imagine him tottering up so many steps? He'd hate every minute of it." 

"Since when would that stop anyone?" 

A fair point. "I suggested it. Your mother didn't want him to come," Luke corrected. 

Ben nodded. That he could believe. 

Vaguely humanoid in form, the three aliens stood roughly a meter high, with dark blue-grey rubbery skin and paler throats. All of them were dressed in identical white robes with simple robe belts and white wimples. On the surface, they were nothing like the porgs, yet something about the way they bobbed their heads and honked among themselves made him wonder if they shared a common ancestor somewhere. 

As the trio approached, Mara knelt before them, keeping her hands open and in front of her to show her peaceful intentions. She said something in a language Luke didn't recognize, and the aliens stopped short, burbling excitedly at her in an equally incoherent reply. 

Mara frowned as she listened to the translation box in her ear, and tried again. More confused squawks ensued. It took several exchanges before the pace picked up, and Mara was able to program the box to speak a reasonably convincing imitation of their native language. Only then did the real conversation begin in earnest. 

After several minutes of intense back-and-forth, the aliens bowed and withdrew, clucking to each other as they clambered back the way they had come. Mara bowed back, rose to her feet and wiped as much of the wet as she could off her knees before she turned back to Ben and Luke. 

"What'd they say?" Ben asked. 

"They call themselves the People-- _Lanai_ in their own language. These ones are Caretakers. They claim that is their sacred duty to maintain this place for any visitors who come seeking truth. As long as we don't disturb anything--they were _very_ intent on that--we're welcome to stay here on the island as long as we want. We can explore anywhere, but they ask that we knock at the gate before entering their own village on the north side of the island." 

"Do they often have visitors?" Luke asked, puzzled. "They seem so--" 

"Casual?" Mara finished. "Yes, I noticed that, too. I asked them about the Jedi, but they don't seem to understand the word. Could be linguistic drift, but... Ben, what do you think?" 

"I don't know," Ben said. "I didn't sense any ill intent from them. Nothing here feels like a trap or a ruse. Perhaps they've been doing this for so long, they don't remember why they're doing it anymore. This seems like the sort of place where nothing ever really changes." 

Luke nodded. Night was coming on fast now, and the wind had picked up with a vengeance. "I concur. What do you say we head back to the ship for now and get something to eat?" 

No one argued. 

***

Ben was fascinated by the intricate stone huts in the abandoned village, how each piece had been shaped just so in order to hold itself in place without any need for mortar. While his parents busied themselves with the campfire in the lee of the _Jade Shadow_ , he constructed miniature imitations out of loose stones. Much to his frustration, none of them held up properly under stress, falling into pieces at his touch. 

"How old d'you think those buildings are?" he asked, shaking his head as he came over to warm his hands in front of the fire next to his parents. 

"Hard to say," his father said. "I didn't see any sign of machine tools anywhere, so they must have been constructed by hand. With the Caretakers here to keep them in good repair and chase away the porgs, they could have been here for millennia. Maybe more. They could easily be older than the Republic." 

"That's a long time for traditions to endure," his mother said. She stared into the fire, chewing thoughtfully on a ration bar. "They must have some sort of communal memory, to keep it going. It would explain why there wasn't as much linguistic drift as the translator was expecting. I wonder..." 

As if on cue, a squawking convey of Caretakers came into view, scattering porgs right and left as they descended the mountain, bearing what on closer inspection appeared to be--freshly caught fish? 

"Somehow, I did not expect room service," his mother said under her breath as they approached. 

"You're just grumpy because you _like_ ration bars," his father said, accepting the offering with a deep bow and a smile that Ben hoped transcended language and cultural barriers. 

It seemed to work. The Lanai matron leading the procession honked in approval and bowed back, before the group retreated in a satisfied huddle.

His father pulled a vibroknife out of the folds of his robe and began to gut the fish with expert precision. This brought another storm of porgs on their heads as they pressed close, eager for any stray guts or entrails tossed their way. A disapproving look from Mara sent them scattering back several feet, but they didn't go retreat any further. 

"Are you sure you can eat that thing?" his mother asked, shaking her head. 

"I'll run it through the scanners in a second to be sure. But it'd be a shame to waste it after they went to all this trouble to bring it to us." 

"Dare I ask what you're going to cook it with?" 

"There's a pair of hydrospanners in the spare toolkit I could improvise into--" 

"No! You are not using tools that touch my ship to cook _fish_!" 

Despite his hunger, Ben was edgy and restless. Watching his parents flirt as they argued over cooking was boring. Night had fallen and the wind off the ocean was damp and cold, even in the relative shelter of the _Jade Shadow_ , but he was suddenly eager to get away and explore. On the edge of his awareness, something momentous lurked in the shadows, waiting for him to find it. He just had to--

"I'm going out," he said, rising to his feet and turning away from the fire. 

"In the morning," his mother said firmly. 

"Aww, come on, Mom, I have glowlamp--" 

"In the morning," she repeated. "If you're going to fall off a cliff into the ocean, you'll do it in broad daylight where I can do something about it." 

"You'd hear me anyway through the Force," Ben muttered in annoyance. But he took the hint and settled down by the fire, though he chafed at the restrictions. While he accepted the pieces of cooked fish his father offered, it was with poor grace that both his parents ignored. 

Somehow that made his temper even worse. 

His dark mood eased when a squall blew in an hour later, drenching them with a thick spatter of rain that forced them to abandon the fire and retreat back inside the ship. It was just as well he hadn't gone exploring in that kind of weather, anyway.

***

The morning dawned clear and cold, the mist from the evening rain disintegrating with the sunrise. After a hasty breakfast of ration bars and leftover fish, Mara announced the plan she and Luke had concocted the night before to Ben. 

"As promised, we're going to explore today, and we'll split up to cover more ground. Your father and I will go west. You go east. Let us know if you find anything big or unusual. Don't hesitate to call if there's trouble. We'll meet back here at the ship in the afternoon for lunch." 

Ben nodded, unable to conceal his eagerness. Despite himself, Luke felt a pang at his son's desire to get away. He knew that Ben's desire for independence was an important part of his development, but he hadn't expected it to hurt so much. There was nothing to gain by holding him back and everything to lose. 

"You sure it's safe to let him go alone?" Mara said as he sped up the stone steps with impressive speed and agility, and vanished out of their sight. 

"We were both doing far riskier things when we were his age," Luke pointed out. "Besides, I haven't sensed anything dangerous here." 

"Nor do I. That doesn't mean there isn't any." 

Luke tugged at her arm. "Come on. Let's go exploring." 

***

They took the stairway over the saddle and upward towards the western peak. About halfway up the slope, the stairs branched off into two paths--one continuing up the mountain and the other spiraling inland to the north. Luke and Mara took the inland path first, which dead-ended in a narrow, secluded valley dominated by the withered trunks of what had once been a gargantuan tree, easily twenty meters in diameter. Each of the four arms was weathered to a grey polish by centuries, if not millennia, of wind and water. Branches from that ancient tree littered the valley, though it was unclear from their placement if the tree had broken apart gradually over time or in some catastrophe all at once. But even in pieces, the size and branching structure were unmistakeable. 

"An uneti tree," Luke breathed. 

"So the Jedi were here then," Mara said. 

"So it seems." 

By long-tradition, the long-lived Force-sensitive uneti trees had been planted at every Jedi temple, outpost or hermitage for thousands of years, since the dawn of the Old Republic. All but a handful of the trees had perished in the slaughter of their Jedi friends and caretakers--and, like the Jedi, Luke had vowed to bring them back to their former glory. But there was no friendly welcome from the long-dead tree before them, no soft whispers ringing in the back of his mind, only the bitter moan of the wind. 

As they circled the ancient remains, they found a massive crack in one of the trunks that had been shaped into a doorway. The two of them wended their way through the narrow passageway into the tree's hollowed heart. 

"Do you think this happened when the tree was alive or dead when they made this place?" Mara asked, running her fingers over the polished walls. "Some of these cuts and curves, I don't think you could do with dead wood - too rigid, it would break off in your hands..." 

"Can you imagine being here if the tree were alive?" Luke whispered. Somehow, it seemed right to whisper here, as if they were treading on holy ground. "This was a sacred place. I can feel it..." 

Hand in hand, they stood for a long time, listening for any hint of memory that might be present within these walls, but they heard nothing more than the rapid beating of their own hearts, mimicking the rise and fall of the ocean outside. 

At last Mara turned away. "This is beautiful, but..." 

"We should keep going," he finished. 

"If we want to meet our son back at the _Shadow_ for lunch, then yes." 

***

As he crested the saddle, Ben spied smoke rising in the distance from the Caretaker's village at the base of the ridge. He hesitated, mindful of their guarded request for privacy from the night before, but it didn't matter - whatever he had sensed last night was somewhere else on the island, still waiting for him. Instead of following the well-worn path down to the Caretaker's cove, he turned to a poorly tended path over the eastern peak terminated a kilometer later into a dramatic series of bare rocks plunging down into the oceans. 

In addition to the endless stream of porgs nesting in the rock faces and paddling in the water, massive thick-skinned mammals with long, curved snouts and wide flippers, perched upright like sentinels along the rocky shoreline below. They bellowed and moaned to each other, snorting sea water out of their noses at random intervals. Ben grinned and bellowed back, laughing and whooping in delight at the creatures' startled reactions as he began to pick his way down the rocks towards them. 

As he drew closer, though, the sensations of darkness, of coldness grew and deepened, in a way that had nothing to do with the wind. He tightened his cloak around him anyway, his ebullience fading as he drew closer to-- _something_ \--

And then he saw it. The tide had gone out, exposing a slab of rock covered with the slimy fronds of brown kelp directly below him. The only spot devoid of the limp blades of algae was a jagged black hole, leading down into a cave only accessible at low tide. 

Whatever he sensed was waiting for him inside. He knew it in the same way he knew where the remotes had been the day before, or how the Caretakers meant them no harm. He knew he had to go inside. It was his destiny. 

In spite of his apprehension, Ben smiled. Whatever was down there might be frightening, but it was _his_. It had been waiting for him for a long time now--and though it was dark and cold, he didn't think it would hurt him. 

The smart thing to do would be to go and get his parents. But where was the fun in that?


	2. Chapter 2

The stairway led to a vast chamber carved out of solid rock at the top of the western peak. It was an imposing space, with a high ceiling that stretched twenty meters above their heads, reminding Luke of some of the more dramatic sections of the Imperial Palace on Coruscant. The walls were rough bare rock, a stark contrast to the polished stone floor inlaid with complex geometric figures marking the movement of celestial bodies. At the center of the room was a raised stone island, in which a mosaic of a stylized uneti tree had been carefully set. The only light came from a jagged opening in western wall, which lead to an exposed ledge suspended over the ocean hundreds of meters below. The doubled sunlight spilled through the gap across the mosaic, setting the shinier rocks in the uneti's crown ablaze with light.

"This is incredible," Luke whispered as he and Mara stepped forward out of the shadows. "The skill this must have taken to carve... and to do it by _hand_..." 

Mara scanned the room. "There's no dust anywhere. The mosaic isn't missing any tiles, and none of them are cracked or broken. But I get the feeling that the Caretakers don't visit this place much." 

"They're missing out," Luke said, staring past her out towards the ledge and its expansive view of the open ocean. "This is a sacred place. Can you imagine what it would be like to train here? To meditate so exposed to the elements--to watch the sky here at night--" 

Mara was still staring at the floor. "If I'm reading these carvings right, we've arrived right in the middle of an alignment between Ach-To, its moon, and the binary suns." 

"How fortuitous," Luke said. "Do you think that means anything?" 

She shrugged, and turned away to gaze out over the ledge. "Might affect the tides, but I don't think we have anything to worry about if you landed the _Shadow_ well above any signs of water-marks." 

"Of course I did. I wouldn't risk your ship for anything. Speaking of which, we're probably going to have to get a new coat of paint on it when we get back to civilization. With all this wind and salt spray, I wouldn't want anything to flake and chip on my watch." 

"Mmm, good idea, Skywalker." Mara came over and leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder as they watched the distant fleck of white waves crashing against the rocks below them, as porgs wheeled and dived, screaming at each other unless their mouths were full of fish. Her free hand came up to caress his neck and shoulders. "Your concern for my well-being is... touching." 

"Oh, is _that_ how you want to play it?" Luke bent and kissed her. It was meant to be casual, but Mara responded far more ardently than he had anticipated, pulling him down towards her. 

"Want to--" he started to say when she let him come up for air, but she was already pulling him back away from the ledge and into the relative shelter of the temple. 

"Sure this isn't sacrilege?" he teased as she pushed him down on the floor and began shucking his clothes off. 

She paused halfway through untangling his shirt, and grinned. "Sacrilege? This is a celebration of _life_ , Skywalker--there's nothing sacrilegious about _this_." She busied herself with her task. "But honestly, even if it was sacrilege--d'you really think that would stop me?" 

Luke didn't even bother to reply with words. 

***

Getting into the cave proved trickier than Ben had anticipated. He slipped and fell several times as he picked his way across the kelp-laden rock slab, slicing open his knee on an hidden bed of razor-sharp mollusks. Ignoring the bleeding, he peered down into the opening, but there was no sign of anything below but darkness. Mindful of his footing, he swung one leg over the edge and the painstaking climb downward into the unknown. 

As he descended, his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he could see the rocky bottom ten meters below him. He made it halfway down before he gave up and jumped the rest of the way down, rolling as he landed to prevent injury, just like his mother had taught him. 

The chill was deeper underground, but at least he was more sheltered from the wind. He shivered, wondering if this was a good idea, but it was far too late to go back now. He pulled out the glowlamp he'd tucked into his pocket the night before, but there was nothing to see but damp rock and empty space. No creatures from the sunlit world above lived here, and no sign of any other forms of life. Disappointed, he turned away--only to see the glint of something reflective in the distance out of the corner of his eye. 

As he moved towards it, he realized it was a vast mirror, one that took up the entire wall of the cave for as far as the dim light of his glowlamp could reach. _Someone built this place_ , he thought, hushed with sudden awe. _Maybe the same people who built the village made this, too._ But there was something raw and wild here, something deep and untamed, and he doubted any Caretakers had ever set foot here. 

There was something off about his reflection. 

For one thing, there were far, far too many of him. There was nothing behind him, and yet there were thousands of him stretching off in an infinite line in both directions, in a way that utterly defied physics or reality. As he stepped forward, they looked at him, and their movements were slightly off from his, a few seconds too late, cascading down the line into eternity. 

Then the reflections began to change. At first, the difference were subtle--green eyes instead of blue, blond hair instead of red-gold, no freckles where there should have been many. Then the changes in his face and body multiplied in a thousand permutations on a theme, growing more and more distorted as he passed them by. Yet all were variations on a single theme, bound together by some inherent unity he did not fully understand.

Time stretched on, and so did his reflections, but he kept walking, still drawn on by that mysterious call. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he knew he would recognize it when he saw it--

As if on cue, he reached the end of the line of Ben Skywalkers, all wearing faces vastly different from his own. There was nothing in the mirror now but a shadowed outline of a human figure rapidly approaching. Tightening his grip on the glow lamp, seized by the same dream-like certainty that had drawn him here, he reached out his hand to touch the mirror, even as his unknown doppelganger mimicked the gesture--

The mirror went translucent like pane of glass. A woman in grey stood before him, with a stunned expression on her face that no doubt matched his own. After all, she was last person he would have ever expected to see here. 

"Jaina? Is that you? What are _you_ doing here?" 

***

This had all seemed like a good idea at the time. 

Drawn on by restlessness and frustration, Rey had gone down to the cave in the twilight and peered over the edge into the churning waters of the ocean below. Even if Luke Skywalker refused to help her, perhaps she could find answers here. Something she needed was inside, and even if she couldn't put her finger on what it was, she knew it was important. What other choice did she have? 

Somehow, she'd lost her balance and fallen in, the icy water jerking her back to her senses as she scrambled and kicked her way back up towards the surface. She flailed her way to a rocky lip and forced herself up over the edge to safety, shaking in dismay at her sudden brush with death. 

At least the water had cushioned her fall, she thought, as she hauled herself to the feet, but she was chilled to the bone now, and her teeth were chattering. How was she going to get out of here? Growing up in the desert, she'd never learned to swim--had never imagined there could be so much water in one place, let alone so unbearably salty--and the climb back up was slick and steep. She'd done worse back on Jakku, but she was cold and wet and tired and the water scared her more than she wanted to admit. 

Then she saw the mirror in front of her. She forgot everything else, staring at the silvered wall in shock. Slowly, she made her way up to her reflection, and stretched out her hand. Their fingers touched--and then the mirror was gone and she was no longer in the cave anymore. 

She hovered in empty space, one of many in an endless line of duplicates. The ones ahead of her began turning even before the thought occurred to her, in choreographed precision until it reached her---and even after she had finished her movement, the wave kept going down the chain until it was lost in the distant haze. 

She flexed her hand; the doubles flexed, too. She snapped her fingers; the sound rippled through the air as the motion repeated over and over again, echoing out into the darkness. 

There was no room in this liminal space for fear or panic. She watched with calm detachment as she streamed past thousands of doppelgangers, towards some fixed point in space and time that was waiting for her. Her destiny. 

Between one blink and the next, she was back at the mirror again, the first in the line of reflections. She clenched her fists, and stepped forward, reaching out to brush the mirror with her fingertips. 

"Let me see," she whispered. ("Let me see, let me see, let me see," echoed her other selves.) There was only one thing she wanted now, more than anything else. "My parents." 

("Parents, parents, parents, parents.") 

She took a deep breath. "Please." 

("Please, please, please, please.") 

_Something_ heard her. She didn't know how or why, but she felt certain that whatever presence had drawn her here had heard her plea and the answer was coming. Her faith was rewarded a few seconds later when two shadowy figures appeared on the other side of the glass, condensing into a single solid blur as they drew closer. She drew in her breath as the figure raised its hand to hers. 

The mist on the glass faded away to reveal a teenage boy with pale skin, freckles, and flaming red hair that was jarring in the midst of grey rock and shadows. Their eyes were level with each other, and she couldn't help but notice that his were a piercing bright blue, like the desert sky back on Jakku. He wore a tan tunic and dark brown pants underneath a hooded brown cloak that was cut in an foreign style. She had never seen him before, but something in the set of his cheekbones and the way he carried himself was oddly familiar--as if she had met him once, long ago, but had completely forgotten until now. 

_I know him,_ she thought. _But how?_

"Jaina?" he said. "Is that you? What are _you_ doing here?"

The glass vanished and their fingers touched as reality snapped back into focus. 

***

It was hard to say which of them was more startled by the sudden contact. Ben froze in shock as the woman with his cousin's face staggered forward with a yelp, losing her balance as she toppled into him. Both of them fell in a disjointed tangle of limbs, and he was surprised to discover she was as real and solid as he was--and sopping wet, to boot. 

"Who are you?" she said, as she pulled back away from him as fast as she could. She bared her teeth at him, fury swelling in her voice as she looked down to where he lay on the ground, frozen in astonishment. "Tell me!" 

"I-I-I-" he stammered, his mind racing. On closer inspection, she wasn't Jaina, but the resemblance to his older cousin was uncanny. Her dark brown hair was the same shade as Jaina's, but she wore it in three small knots on the back of her head instead of loose, and there was a wild glint in her hazel eyes that would have been out of place in Jaina's lighter ones, though the aura of burning intensity was the same. Where Jaina was settled and sure, this woman was more than a little feral, as if she'd been forced to fend for herself at an early age. And surely he had never seen Jaina wear anything like the simple grey outfit and arm warmers that this woman favored. Yet something in her face, in the way she carried herself screamed _Jaina_ at him, and he gasped like a flopping fish, unable to organized his thoughts into anything approaching coherent speech. 

She rose to her feet and reached for the lightsaber at her belt, leveling into a defensive stance. "I said, who are you? Speak!" 

"My name is Ben," he said.

It was the wrong thing to say. She hissed at him, and ignited her weapon, the blue-white blade filling the cave with its phosphorescent light. "Liar. I've met Ben Solo and you don't look anything like him." 

What was she talking about? There was no Ben Solo, and never had been. There was Jacen and Jaina and Anakin, and that was it. If Uncle Han had any living relatives, his nephew had never met them. 

"I'm not Ben Solo." 

She swung the lightsaber down in a threatening gesture. "Don't lie to me! Who are you?" 

One glimpse at her lightsaber and Ben recovered himself enough to match her tone for tone. "My name is Ben Skywalker," he said, retrieving his glowlamp and getting to his feet. "Who are you, and why do you have my mother's lightsaber? Where did you get it?" 

Whatever she had been expecting, that wasn't it. Surprise made her hesitate, and the tip of the lightsaber drooped. "Your mother's lightsaber? This belongs to Luke Skywalker--I brought it here to return to him, and he tossed it over a cliff--" Then the rest of his words caught up with her and she blanched in dismay. "He never told me he had a son!" 

This made no sense, but at least the lightsaber was no longer pointed at his throat. He was reasonably certain he could wrest it out of her hands with a well-timed Force tug, but he wasn't sure that she was an enemy. Confused, yes, misguided, yes, but something about her _burned_ , oddly familiar despite the strangeness. Her energy was confused and tangled, but she was strong in the Force, stronger than anyone Ben had ever met outside his family, and a formidable opponent. He would be wise not to underestimate her. 

"Look," he said. "I don't know who you are or how you got here, but--" 

"Rey," she said, extinguishing the lightsaber and holding it out to him. Evidently, she'd decided to trust him after all. "I'm Rey. I guess this... belongs to your then." 

He stepped forward and took the hilt from her. It was his mother's lightsaber, all right--the one that had once belonged to his father, a long time ago, and his grandfather before that. More to the point, it was the same one that had been clipped to his mother's belt this morning when they'd parted ways at the _Jade Shadow_. How had Rey gotten ahold of it in those intervening hours?

***

Luke pillowed his head on Mara's bare shoulder, breathing in the familiar spicy scent of her sweat. "This is so good. Why don't we do this more often?" he wondered aloud. 

At that moment, a panicked scream ran through the Force--accompanied by the sensations of darkness, gray stone, and salt water all jangled into one. _Mom! Dad! Help!_

"You _had_ to jinx it," Mara growled, pushing him off her as she reached for her flight suit. 

"It's not my fault!" Luke exclaimed in his best imitation of Han Solo, fumbling for his own clothing. 

She was already out the door before he was halfway through. "You go over land - I'm going to bring the _Shadow_ around! Call me if you find him before I do!" 

"Got it!" Luke called, on his feet as he plunged down the steep stairs in her wake. He reached out to the Force for that unmistakable bright spot that marked Ben's presence, trying to control his own rising sense of panic at the unknown danger that threatened his son. 

So much for a simple and easy vacation... 

*** 

Ben was still staring at the lightsaber in his hand when his danger sense flared, jerking him back to the present. Something cold and wet sloshed at his feet, and he looked down to see puddles of sea water and foam pooled on what had been dry ground seconds earlier. The pounding roar of the ocean echoed in his ears, loud and ominous. He thought of the open lip of the cave, the exposed rock covered with brown kelp, and his heart beat frantically in his chest as he connected the dots. 

He'd come down at low tide, and now the water was rising. 

If they stayed here any longer, they'd be trapped. 

He couldn't control the flare of panic that rose in him at the thought, lighting up through the Force like a beacon. _Mom! Dad! Help!_ But even as he cried out, he knew if he stood by and waited for his parents to rescue them, they'd both be dead. 

There was no time for arguments. "Rey!" he shouted, clipping the lightsaber to his belt, and grabbing for her arm with his free hand, the one that wasn't holding the glowlamp. "Come on! We have to go! _Now_!" 

For a second, he thought she would fight him, but to her credit, she saw the seawater rising, and didn't panic. They staggered through the water--now up to their ankles--as he pulled them towards the entrance. The waves were coming faster now, and every crash blocked out what little light streamed through the opening in the ceiling. More than ever, he was grateful for the soft, steady glare of the glowlamp or else they would have been in total darkness until the wave withdrew and the daylight returned. 

Even so, he didn't see how they were going to get out of here. It was ten meters up to rocky walls to the surface, and neither of them had any rope. Every thirty seconds a new wave crashed down over the opening, soaking them to skin as more water filled the chamber. The water was up to their hips now, and icy cold. 

Rey let go of him with a gasp and staggered towards the rock wall, clawing up it as best she could. She got two meters up before another wave crashed over, and she lost her grip. 

"Rey, what are you doing?" Ben shouted. 

"I can't _swim_ \--" she cried, splashing wildly as she flailed in water that was now up over both of their heads. 

Under other circumstances, he would have been tempted to tread water and let the rising tide carry them back up to the surface. But between her terror and another crashing wave that pushed both of them under the water until they clawed his way back to the surface, waiting didn't seem like the brightest idea. They had to get out before they drowned, and he couldn't count on his parents to find them in time. 

_Think. Think. What do I do?_

The answer appeared in the back of his mind as clearly as if someone had spoken it aloud, but it was his own voice. _Use the Force, Ben._

Too much stimuli all at once. Too many things vying for his attention right now. He shut them all out--the ocean, the rocks, the desperate panic he was going to die--and focused on the only ones that mattered in that moment. Himself--and Rey. Two separate points in space, yet linked, just like the remotes back on the ship. Not different. Not separate. 

He pulled them upward with the Force. 

He got them halfway the opening before he ran out of steam. It was too much, too heavy, too tiring-- Then a wave crashed down on them, hard and icy, and he lost control. For a heart-stopping second they were falling--and then the Force surged around them as Rey caught on to what he was doing and they hung suspended in mid-air. Then he was back, and she was boosting him with her own strength, and they were flying through the next wave, out of the water and into the air, up and over the rocks--

With a bone-cracking thud, they slammed into the rocky cliffs above the sea cave, tumbling down a few feet to hang suspended over the flooded rockface where the opening to the cave had been. 

"T-t-that was c-c-close," Ben said, his teeth chattering as he recovered himself enough to push them both back from the edge. He was sore and bruised, and his leg ached where he had landed on it, but nothing seemed to be broken after all. He pulled his wet cloak tighter around him, but it didn't help. Rey, lacking even that much covering, was even worse off. "Th-thank you for h-helping me--" 

"I don't know how I did it," Rey said, rubbing her ankles and wrists. "I just knew I didn't want to die down there." 

"W-well, it worked." He reached for his belt to reassure himself the lightsaber was still there. It was. Thank goodness for small mercies. If his mother knew he'd lost it--

Rey looked around in confusion. "It was night when I went into the cave. How long were we in there?"

"What?" Another puzzle he was too exhausted to deal with. "I don't know what you're talking about." By his reckoning, they had only been in the cave for a few minutes--but surely, he would have noticed if the tide was coming in, he couldn't possibly be _that_ stupid--

Ben was spared any further debate by the arrival of Luke Skywalker, his robes streaming in the wind behind him as he slid headlong down the rocks towards them. "Ben! Are you all right? Ben--!" 

He ground to a halt in front of his son, embracing him in relief. "Oh, Ben--" 

"Uh, Dad," Ben said when his father had let go and he could breath again. "Th-this is Rey. She says she knows you--" 

His father turned, as if only noticing Rey for the first time. She picked herself up and faced him squarely. "Master Skywalker," she said, a fierce pride evident in her voice. Then she squinted, as if she wasn't seeing what she had expected. "Where's your--?" 

"Jaina?" his father said in astonishment. "How did you get here?"

"She's not Jaina," Ben interjected quickly. "I thought so, too, but--" 

Rey's bewilderment was growing by the moment. "You don't know me? But I--I'm Rey--we met before--I--"

At that moment, the _Jade Shadow_ swooped overhead, blocking out any hope of further conversation. All three were forced to huddle together as the ship came down for a landing on the barren flat of rocks. Exhausted and overwhelmed as he was, Ben couldn't help but admire this impressive display of his mother's piloting skills--there weren't many beings out there who could thread the needle as well as she could without damaging her ship in process. 

Rey's mouth, already opened at the sight of the _Shadow_ , dropped even wider as the gangplank descended and his mother ran to them. "Luke! Ben! Thank goodness you're all right! Who--" she started, as she caught sight of Rey. 

Rey, for her part, was out patience with this reaction. "Who are _you_?" 

His mother thrust up her head regally. "I'm Mara Jade Skywalker." 

Rey stared. 

"She's my wife," his father said helpfully into the silence. 

Rey's stricken expression was so funny that Ben might have laughed out loud had the universe not chosen that particular moment to wobble and fall to pieces before collapsing completely into darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

"We have a problem," Mara said, staring at the two lightsabers in her hand. Aside from a few nicks and scratches on Rey's saber, it was identical to hers in every possible way. That, combined with Rey's story, had resulted in a headache for the two older Jedi that neither knew how to resolve. 

Ben had woken up long enough for a long steam in the 'fresher and an improbable amount of food before vanishing into his room. Rey had proved more forthcoming after a shower and a meal of her own, though she'd been exceedingly uncomfortable in one of Mara's spare robes and kept fluffing her sleeves and smoothing out the folds in her tunic, as if she wasn't used to such loose garments. Unsettled by her tale, Luke and Mara had left her curled up on the couch in the ship's lounge, and retreated to their own quarters for a private council. 

"She can't possibly be who she says she is," Mara repeated, setting the lightsabers down on the bed and pacing back and forth. 

"Why not?" Luke asked from his perch by the viewport, though his attention was focused on her movements rather than the view of the Ach-To ocean beyond. "What are our other options? Let's see-- a secret clone of Jaina." 

"No. I already ran the genetics."

He made a mental note never to underestimate his wife. "All right, then. Human replica droid." 

Mara shook her head. "Definitely no. She's one-hundred-percent organic." 

"All right, then we're back to alternate realities again. In her case, one that diverges from our timeline somewhere around the Battle of Endor." 

"...That's what she _says_. But it's not possible. And yet--" She looked down again at the two identical lightsabers and shook her head again. "I don't have a better explanation."

"I agree that the implications are troubling," Luke said, "but her presence doesn't seem to have destroyed the space-time continuum or induced any paradoxes." 

"Yet." 

"So far, so good. So what's _really_ bothering you, then?" 

Mara made a face, and went back to pacing. "I should have known you'd pick that up. Very well. Her entire _timeline_ bothers me. Her galaxy in turmoil, a new Lord of the Sith rising, Han murdered by his own son. You cut off from the Force, alone and in exile, the Academy burned to the ground." 

"And you don't exist there." 

She stared past him out the viewport at the ocean, a muscle in her jaw twitching. He rose and put his arm around her shoulder. 

"Either I don't exist, or something terrible happened to me. Why else would you retreat like that? Why else would Rey have no idea who I am?" 

"She was abandoned on a desert planet in the middle of nowhere, she's not exactly on the cutting edge of current events. She'd never even heard of Han, or Leia, or their son before--" 

Mara cut him off with a gesture. "Those people in her world, they share the same name and the same face, but they're not the people we know, and they never will be. We're not responsible for their actions or what they do. And yet--and yet--" 

"You wonder if we might have done the same thing if life had turned out differently," Luke finished.

She nodded, and leaned into his embrace, wrapping her arm around his shoulder, too. They stared out at the ocean for several minutes in silence. 

"I don't know, Luke," she said at last. "But it scares me. I didn't think I could be this frightened of something that never happened, how fragile our happiness really is. To think that we might have lost it so easily--or never even had it in the first place--" 

Her tension eased, but she was still holding back from him. He squeezed her shoulder. "Come on, spill it." 

"I ran the gene tests. She might be the spitting image of Jaina Solo, but she's not Han and Leia's biological daughter." 

He knew where she was going before she spoke, but it was still a punch in the gut when it came. 

"She's _our_ daughter, Luke. And neither of us have ever seen her before." 

Now he understood Mara's agitation and rage, why she wanted so desperately to deny Rey's existence, yet could not. Only Darth Vader's revelation of fatherhood on Cloud City had ever hurt him as much, and yet he was older now, and his identity was not so fragile as it had once been. For Mara, who had never known her parents, and had taken her family by marriage to heart, it was shattering. 

"She's not our daughter," he said at last when he was capable of coherent speech again."You said so yourself. Those people in her world, they may share our names and faces, but they're not us, we're not responsible for their actions--" 

"D'you think that really _matters_ , Luke?" Her voice cracked, and she buried her face in his shoulders, unable to suppress her tears. "D'you think it matters when I look at her knowing that her parents abandoned her and never came back? To know that she finally found Luke Skywalker at last, only for him to utterly reject her? D'you think it _matters_ to know it was someone else's choice when it so very easily could have been me, been us? There for the grace of the Force go I--but I could have. And did. In some other world, I did. And I wonder--how much of that is in me? How much do I share with her, besides a name and a face? Could I have done what she did--if--if--" 

"But you didn't," Luke finished. " _We_ didn't. We are together, and our son is alive and flourishing. The galaxy is at peace and the Jedi Order risen from the ashes. We did it--in this timeline, in this reality, we did it. We won. And that _matters_. The fact that we failed elsewhere doesn't take away from our victories here." 

"I know," she said through gritted teeth, choking back another sob. "But, Luke, she's our _daughter_ \--and I've never met her before, I don't know her, she doesn't know me, and half of me wants her to stay here forever, and half of me wants to send her back into the darkness from which she came and forget we ever saw her--" 

That was something Luke had wondered about himself, secret daughter or not. "She's gonna have to go back. She doesn't belong here. More to the point, if the galaxy in _her_ dimension is as bad as she claims, you think she's going to sit here quietly and not try to save it if she can? You _saw_ how devoted she is to the Resistance. They need her, Mara, and we don't. How could we take that away from them?" 

There was a long pause while Mara considered this. "Damn shame," she said at last. 

"And here I thought you didn't like her," Luke said, batting her shoulder playfully. 

"I like her fine. It's the implications of her existence that make me unhappy." The emotional storm had passed and she was calmer now. She wiped her face on the sleeve he wasn't leaning on and sniffed. 

"Ben likes her, too," Luke said with a shake of his head. "We'd better tell him before his crush gets any deeper. It was awkward enough with me and Leia without repeating it in the next generation, too." 

"Well, it's not every day you run into a long-lost sister you've never met before," Mara laughed. "Unless you're a Skywalker and then it happens all the damn time." She sniffed. "Why would Leia name her son Ben? That makes no sense. She never even _met_ Kenobi." 

Luke shrugged. "A lot of what Rey said makes no sense. Either she's an unreliable witness, or her version of the galaxy really _is_ that crazy. It'd be easier for all of us if she were lying, but my gut says the latter." 

"So what happens next?"

The million credit question. "Well," said Luke. "I have an idea..." 

*** 

"I have to go back," Rey shouted. "What do you mean I can't go back?" 

"You're welcome to go back whenever you want, but right now you can't reach that mirror without swimming there," Mara said sternly. She brought up a holographic model of the Ach-To system on the dejarik table: a single blue planet and its solitary moon orbiting two binary yellow stars. "As far as we can determine, that cave is only accessible when the suns, the moon, and the planet are all aligned with each other." She paused the display at the critical moment and pointed. "Furthermore, the tidal reach is twenty percent higher and lower when the moon is at its closest point of orbit to Ach-To. We just finished one such sequence, and there won't be another one for..." She sped up the projector. "Three months, at the earliest." 

"According to this, the perigean low tide started the evening we arrived on Ach-To, right about when I first felt the pull to the cave," Ben observed from his place at the table. "In other words, if you'd let me explore when I asked, we probably could have made it out without the high tide coming in on top of us... Just saying." 

Luke had to fight to hide his grin as Mara glared at him. To Ben's credit, he stood his ground and didn't flinch until his mother relented, and shifted her gaze elsewhere. 

"Surely you have some sort of tech so I could breathe underwater," Rey said into the silence, unwilling to give up. "I've _met_ people from water worlds, they have all kinds of equipment--" 

Luke shook his head. "We'd have to go back to civilization for that. And honestly, that tech works so much better if you're already comfortable with being in the water and you know how to swim. By the time we get you trained up and ready to use it--" 

"--it'll be time for the next alignment," Mara finished. "You'd have approximately fourteen hours to get back in the cave and go back through the mirror--or however it is you got here." 

"So," Luke picked up before Rey could voice another objection, "since it looks like you'll be here for at least the next three months, I wanted to offer you a choice. You're welcome to stay here on Ach-To if you want--I think the Caretakers would be fine with that, and look for a faster way back home. Or you could come with us to the Jedi Academy on Yavin IV for training, and we'd bring you back here in time for the alignment." 

All of Rey's frustration evaporated faster than water in a vacuum. "Training? Me? The Jedi Academy?" she repeated, stunned. 

"I mean, wasn't that why you came to Ach-To in the first place?" Mara drawled. "Personal, one-on-one-training with Luke Skywalker?" 

"I may not be _your_ Luke Skywalker, but I am _a_ Luke Skywalker," Luke said. "I trust that's good enough?" 

There was no mistaking the light of hope that blossomed in her eyes at his words. He'd been right after all. She _was_ a fighter. "You'll train me as a Jedi?" she repeated in a daze. 

"Yes, I will," Luke promised, wondering how the hell his other self in her universe had ever been able to say no to such a burning presence in the Force, so eager to be taught--to be loved. "Han is still alive in our universe, and though he doesn't know you yet, I'm sure he and Leia will love you when they meet you. And so will their children. Our Ben is the only Ben," he added, seeing her flinch, "but there's Jacen and Jaina and Anakin Solo--and Kam and Tionne and Streen and Corran and all the other Jedi there. There's something to learn from all of them. Three months of training--more if you want it--and then you can return to your own universe whenever you're ready with the skills you need to set everything to right." 

"I'm not evil, I promise," Ben said, spreading his hands wide in a gesture of mock innocence. "And no one else is to--that we know of, anyway." 

"And I will personally teach you everything you need to gut this Kylo Ren like a fish," Mara promised. 

"He can be redeemed--" Rey started. 

"We'll see about that," Mara said firmly. "But we'll teach you everything so you can make that decision for yourself when the time comes."

"I will! I will! I'm going to be a Jedi!" Overcome with emotions, Rey flung her arms around Luke's neck, crushing him to her with an unexpectedly strong grip that belied her small stature. 

He was going to enjoy this, he realized when she pulled away at last. 

"You _will_ be a Jedi, Rey," Luke said softly as he looked into her eyes and told her the same the thing that Ben Kenobi had said to him so long ago. "Not the last of the old--but the first of the new."

She nodded soberly. Ben cheered. Mara smiled. 

***

The Caretakers were not the only Lanai in these parts of Ach-To. Once each month, the Visitors came to the Island in their wooden ships, bringing fish and oil and other trade goods in a huge open-air party known as the Festival of Return. 

The four humans would have known something unusual was afoot that evening from the lights and torches and strains of distant music over the ridge, but they were all too eager to accept the invitation to join in the celebration. Mara was the only one able to communicate, but it didn't matter. Some things--like music and joy, laughter and love, were universal. 

There was a lot of that last one, Luke thought, watching one of the Visitors slip away into the shadows with a Caretaker. Judging from the squawks and moans in the distance, there was quite a lot of coupling going on this night. He fully intended to cozen Mara away from her animated conversation with a cluster of Caretaker matrons and get in on the spirit of the action later in the evening, but for now, it was enough to sit back and enjoy the frothy, vaguely alcoholic brews and the roasted fish and porgs, and watch the dancing. Ben and Rey were dancing with each other, bobbing and swaying in time to the music in a rough imitation of their Lanai compatriots before dissolving into giggles. 

While his attention was distracted, Mara had slipped away from her conversation and come up beside him. "We have to tell her about her parents," she said in his ear. She settled down beside him, wrapped a companionable arm around his shoulder and took a sip from her frothing mug. 

"I know. There just hasn't been time today to get her alone today, and I wanted it to be private." He looked up at her and winked. "Don't worry about Ben, she already has a boyfriend back in her universe. One more day won't hurt."

"Oh, right, that ex-stormtrooper fellow," Mara said. A new tune picked up - Rey and Ben had traded partners and now each was dancing with a series of the Caretakers. "You think we're making the right choice to let her go?" she said at last. 

Luke nodded. "It's not our choice. It's hers. And letting go is part of being a parent, even if we're not really her parents." 

"We're _better_ than her parents," Mara sniffed. 

"I hope she sees it that way, too. It'll twist the training dynamic a little, more than I'm comfortable with, but we've done all right with Ben so far. The longer we wait, the worse it will be when she learns the truth. Better than she knows where she comes from before she meets this Kylo Ren again and he uses her ignorance against her. Who knows, maybe he _can_ be turned back to the light. Impossible things have happened before." 

"Redemption has always been a family affair," Mara agreed. She downed the rest of her drink in one long gulp and threw the mug aside. "So, Skywalker, shall we show the children how it's done?" She gestured to the dance before them. 

"Yes," he agreed, laughing, as she hauled him to his feet and lead him out into the center of the writhing mass of Lanai, swaying in time to the music. "We shall."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the astronomical phenomenon I use in this fic is a real thing - it's called a perigean spring tide in our universe.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I hadn't planned on writing any more of this until after Episode IX came out, but then I saw the leaked spoilers and needed some catharsis, so this happened. Enjoy!

Luke woke up the next morning alone in his quarters on the _Jade Shadow_ with a hangover wildly out of proportion with the amount of alcohol he'd consumed the night before. Apparently, Lanai brews were stronger than he'd expected--or maybe it was a quirk of human physiology. 

Come to think of it, Mara had drunk as much as he had, if not more, and _she_ wasn't lying around, moaning like a stuck porg. Where was she, anyway? 

When he reached out with the Force, he was relieved to locate her immediately outside the ship, watching Ben train with a remote. 

_'Bout time you woke up. Don't worry, the effects are temporary. Ask me how I know._

Well, that was comforting. _All I want right now is to devour an entire gundark._

_Don't worry, I brought plenty of ration bars._

Luke stifled a groan, which only made his wife smirk harder. _If you hurry, Rey might even have left some for you--_

He swatted Mara away from his mind with a gesture that was half-annoyed and half-playful and rolled out of bed after two failed attempts. True to her prediction, the headache began to dissipate as soon as he was up and moving. By the time he made his way out of the room, he was almost human again--and in a better humor to deal with the sight that awaited him in the lounge. 

A barefoot Rey crouched on the dejarik table over an impressive mound of ration bar wrappers. She popped a half-eaten bar into her mouth, her eyes half-closed in religious fervor as she devoured it--only to startle wildly as she caught sight of Luke. 

She caught herself before she fell, of course, but it was hard-- _very_ hard--not for him not to laugh. 

"Any chance you could spare a bite for a poor old Jedi master?" Luke teased, as he settled into his usual spot by the viewports, enjoying the flare of color on her cheeks. 

Memory flared: stranded and soaking on Dagobah, eating a decade-old freeze-dried MRE a questionable wholesaler had sold the Rebellion at a steep discount, the meal interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the small, wrinkled alien who would become his teacher. 

Now it was _his_ turn to play the role of crazy old coot. Who said getting old was a bad thing? 

Rey didn't stop eating, but she rummaged around through the wrappers until she found an uneaten one and tossed it across the room to him. He could have caught it easily, but instead, he used the Force to tweak the bar's arc so that it curved gracefully into his outstretched hand instead of moving his own body to intercept it. 

All chewing ceased. In utter silence, Luke drew back the airtight foil packet around the ration bar and brought it to his mouth. "Mmmm-hmm. Delicious." 

In actual fact, it tasted like rotted vornskr, but he was too hungry to reject the calories. Even if spitting it out and complaining was exactly what Yoda had done. 

Rey's jaw twitched slightly, but she remained frozen in position, as if any movement might trigger a reaction she was unprepared to handle. Or maybe she was too stunned by the casual display of his Force powers to muster any coherent response. 

He took pity on her and didn't string his own meal out very long. He was still hungry when he finished the first bar, but there was no way he was going to ask her for another one. He waited until he'd swallowed the last morsel, then licked his lips, neatly folded the wrapper, and tossed it into the waste receptacle in the corner--the lid of which opened just in time to let the wrapper sail through.

That wasn't the Force at all, just an automatic sensor program Mara had set up, but he had to admit it was impressive if you didn't know how it worked. 

Rey stared at him, her eyes as big as derku eggs.

"So, Rey," Luke said after a moment. "What do you say we take a walk?" 

***

Ben and Mara waved to them as they left the ship and headed up the steep stone steps to the rest of the island, but neither seemed curious enough to interrupt their activities. Even if Luke hadn't caught the impression that Mara had already shared Rey's heritage with their son, Ben's glance was remarkably chastened compared to the previous evening. A little awkwardness was understandable, given the circumstances. 

It wasn't fun to feel left out in love, but Luke had no doubt he'd recover quickly from this unexpected disappointment once he'd had a chance to process it. For all the recent adolescent moodiness, he was a sensible kid at heart. 

Luke made his way slowly and calmly up the stairs to the ancient Jedi village, Rey trailing at his heels. She was wearing shoes now, and they'd both donned heavy cloaks to ward off the misty chill and the omnipresent wind, which billowed about them as they stood looking down over the cliffs. 

Neither of them spoke. The sun was lost behind a sea of grey clouds, as if the water and sky were mirror image of each other. The wind sang in their ears as it blew off the endless ocean, ringing in their ears along with the raucous chatter of the porgs. 

Finally, Luke cleared his throat and turned to her. "What did your Master Skywalker teach you?" 

If she was puzzled by the question, she didn't show it. "He took me up to the highest point on the island," Rey said, pointing to the ruins of the old temple Luke and Mara had been--exploring--before Ben's distress had reached them. "There was an opening in the rock, illuminating a mosaic of light and dark entwined on the floor. We went out through that opening to a ledge overlooking the water. I begged him to bring the Jedi back, explained we wouldn't stand a chance against Kylo Ren without them. He asked me what I knew about the Force." 

"And what was your answer?" 

"I said--'It's a power that Jedi have that lets them control people and--make things float,'" she finished quickly, as if the admission embarrassed her. 

Luke's heart ached in sympathy for her. To have her first experience of the Jedi--of the Force in action--be the damage Kylo Ren had done to her mind was appalling, but there was nothing he could to do change it now. 

"And what was his response?" he coaxed gently. 

She flushed. "He told me everything I'd said was completely wrong." 

Luke hated to admit it, but his doppelganger had a point. That was only a fraction of what the Force could _do_ \--but that didn't even come close to capturing what the Force _was_. Luke would have put his objections more tactfully, though. 

"So, then...?" 

Rey gathered visibly gathered herself and pressed on with the story. "He made me sit on a rock with my legs crossed, told me the Force was an energy field between all living things, the balance that binds the universe together--" 

Oh, boy. Mara was going to have a fit when she heard the b-word, but Luke was going to let that one pass for now. 

"--and when I said I didn't understand, he told me to close my eyes, breathe, and reach out my hand--" 

Rey extended her hand to illustrate her very literal reaction. Luke had to hide his smile at her earnest naivete. 

"--and I _felt_ something tickling it! And he it was the Force..." 

Her words trailed off, and she was silent for a long moment, pondering. 

"And then he slapped my hand," she said. "I hadn't touched the Force at all--it had been a branch--and he'd been _teasing_ me--" 

She met Luke's gaze evenly, as if daring him to laugh at her, too. Luke kept his expression solemn and stony to encourage her to keep going. 

"He meant, reach out with my mind," Rey explained at length. "I didn't get that at first. So I closed my eyes and reached out with my _feelings_ \--and I saw--visions. Life and death on the island, all feeding each other. There was cold and there was warmth; there was peace and there was violence; every thing entangled with its opposite. There was no separation, no distance--everything just as it was, just as it should be. Outside--and inside, too. And he told me that the Force did not belong to the Jedi. That if the Jedi died, the Light would remain, and it was vanity to assume otherwise." 

She took a deep, halting breath. "And then I felt--I felt the cave. So dark, so cold. Calling to me. As if it had something I needed. So I reached out to it and-- I couldn't make it, something blocked me. I fell back into my body, and it hurt. And Master Skywalker was _horrified_. Told me I should have resisted. Should have--" 

_He knows_ , Luke thought with a shudder. _He may not consciously realize who she is, but deep-down, on some level he knows, just like Leia always did. He's afraid of her, of what she represents. He knows that place would show her who she is if she let it. He's afraid of the truth. Sometimes the only way we know who we are is to walk into the dark places of the world--and not all dark places are evil ones. That, we bring with us._

"He told me that my powers scared him. That of all his students, only Ben Solo had ever had such raw strength. And then he walked away. And I realized--he wasn't a part of my vision. He'd cut himself off. He was this--blank spot I couldn't see, couldn't sense, couldn't detect." She sniffed, wiped away the tear rolling down her cheek, and kept going. 

"I don't understand how he could do that. I don't understand how he could hurt himself so much." 

Luke wrapped his arms around her shoulders, offering what comfort her could. She pillowed her face into his shoulder and sobbed into his robes, while Luke muttered soothing words. "You've been very brave, Rey, so very brave, the other Luke is in a lot of pain, it wasn't your fault..."

Finally, Rey drew back. "So that evening I went down to where I'd felt the cave. And I went inside. To--to see what it would tell me, like I told you yesterday. And here I am." 

"And here you are," Luke said, making a sweeping gesture to encompass the panorama before them. "I hope I'm better company that the other Luke." 

She favored him with a shaky smile. "No comparison."

"Good, I'm glad to know I beat the competition," Luke chuckled. "I can't promise that all your lessons will go smoothly, because they won't. That your training will fix all your problems, because it won't. But I promise to tell you the truth, even when it hurts. Even when you won't thank me for it. 

"But I also promise to be compassionate. To be kind. To use the truth like a scalpel, not a sword. Because that's what the Jedi have always done. What we will always do, as long as we are here in this galaxy.

"Rey," he said. "You told us that you went to the cave because there was one thing you wanted, more than anything else." 

"My parents," Rey breathed. 

"Why?" 

"What?" She stared at him as if he were crazy. "Because they're--they're my parents! Why _wouldn't_ I want to know about them?" 

Luke sighed. He, too, would have plunged into the unknown in a heartbeat in his teenage years for a chance to learn any tidbits about Anakin Skywalker's life, but Rey needed to say it out loud. "What could that knowledge give you that you don't already have?" 

"I want to know who I am!" she shouted. "I want to know where I come from--I want to _belong_ \--" 

He thought she was going to burst into tears again, but she mastered herself. Chewing her lower lip, she stared off into the distance, at the steep rocky cliffs and the churning ocean beyond. 

"I want a family," she whispered. 

"There are many kinds of family," Luke said. "One you're born to, and others you choose. The first one is pure luck, pure chance--the second one you make for yourself. You already _have_ a family, Rey, if you want one--your friends in the Resistance. They don't care who you are, or where you came from. They value you because you're _you_. Why throw that away?" 

Rey's back was ramrod straight. "I'm not. I just want to know the _truth_." 

"I used to think that, too. But once you know--there's no undoing it, no stepping away from the truth, no pretending it isn't real. I thought I wanted to know the truth about my father--only to discover he wasn't who I thought he was. 

"What if your parents aren't who you want them to be, Rey? What if they were smugglers or murderers or criminals, on the run from the law? What if they were Imperial sympathizers, or religious zealots, or people who cheat at sabacc?" 

"It doesn't matter," she spat at him. "It doesn't matter what they _were_ because _not knowing_ is _worse_ \--" 

"To be a Jedi is to make peace with not-knowing," Luke said. "If you crave certainty, this is the wrong path for you." 

For a moment, he thought she was going to lash out, or stalk away in disgust--but she mastered herself, plastering her hands against her side. 

"You're asking me to give up my dream," she said at last. 

"I'm asking you to choose which dream is more important to you. Which dream you will dedicate your life to." 

" _You_ have a family," Rey snarled. "Why do _I_ have to choose?" 

Luke raised an eyebrow. "I never knew my birth mother, and I thought my father was dead right up until the moment he cut my hand off in a lightsaber duel. The Empire murdered my aunt and uncle and burned our farm, and all of my Jedi teachers are dead. Yes, I found my twin sister in the end, but we chose each other to be family long before we ever knew of our other connection. I _chose_ the family I have, chose to embrace what I could of my heritage, and discard the rest--precisely what I am asking _you_ to do." 

"I--" Rey stammered. Luke could feel the pressure around them building up, as her emotions rose to a fever pitch. He braced himself with his shields, preparing for impact. 

His stomach lurched queasily. He really wished he hadn't eaten that ration bar now. 

Rey let out a long, drawn-out breath that was half-sob, half-growl. " _Fine_ ," she said at last. "I'll accept my ignorance for now, if that's what it takes for you to train me, but I want you to know that I haven't forgotten them. If I can find them, I will--"

Good enough. Might as well get on with it. "What if I told you we already have?" 

Rey stopped short as if he'd stabbed her with a lightsaber. It took several seconds for her to recover from the surprise--and she ran at him, all of her frustration evaporating like humidity in the Tatooine suns. "You _know_?" she shrieked, loud enough that even the porgs fell silent for a moment. "Who--what-- _how--_ " 

She drew back as a new thought occurred to her. "That was all a test," she said slowly. "You were testing me." 

Luke nodded. "And you passed." 

"They must be terrible people, then, if you had to preface it like that." 

"People? Yes. Terrible? I don't know about that," he said. "I don't know them well enough to say for certain. But I wanted to make sure you were ready for the truth. For anything." 

Rey met his gaze squarely. "Tell me," she said softly. Not begging, not demanding, not pleading--just a quiet, simple request. "Please." 

"While you were in the 'fresher yesterday, Mara ran a gene test." Luke held up his hands as Rey opened her mouth to say something. "I know, I know, she should have asked your permission, but I didn't find out about it until after the fact. Mara wanted to make sure you were who you said you were and not some sort of clone--" 

"Would that be bad?" she interjected. 

"Not necessarily, but the last clone we met was one of me who was trying to kill us, so you can't really blame her for being paranoid." 

Rey goggled at him. Luke pressed on hastily. "Anyway, Mara ran a gene test, and you will be relieved to know you are _not_ genetically indistinguishable from our niece Jaina--Han and Leia's daughter," he added for clarification at Rey's blank look. "Nor are you their child." 

"But you said you knew who they were, not who they _weren't_ \--" 

"I'm getting to that," Luke said. "Apparently my wife is more paranoid than I thought, because she tested other possibilities as well. According to the tests, your parents are--" 

Even knowing it was the right thing to do, it was so hard to get the words out. 

"Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade," he said at last. "In _your_ universe." 

For the third time this morning (or was it the fourth? He was starting to lose track), Rey froze in surprise. Her mouth dropped open. She gaped at him, twitching, but nothing coherent came out. 

"No," she said at last. "You're wrong. That can't possibly be right. That's--" 

"--Impossible?" he finished smoothly, marveling once again at the parallels between his past and his present. "Search your feelings if you doubt me. If that doesn't satisfy you, Mara will show you the test results once we get back to the _Shadow_. Or you can test yourself if you're still skeptical." 

"You can't possibly expect me to believe," she said slowly, "that _that_ Luke Skywalker is my father." 

Luke inclined his head in a reasonable approximation of a courtly bow he'd learned from watching Leia at work. "I warned you you might regret learning the truth."

"But I thought--I thought--" 

And then she ran at him, wrapping her arms around him with strength to rival a Wookiee as she whooped right in his ear. "I'm a Skywalker! I'm a Skywalker! I'm a Skywalker!" 

Luke tried to give as good as he got, but he was convinced she'd cracked one of his ribs by the time she finally pulled away. "So," he wheezed, rubbing his chest in a futile attempt to ease the pain. "I take it you're not entirely disappointed with the results?" 

Her smile was as bright as a supernova, and he could _feel_ her roiling emotions even through his shields: confusion and frustration, anger and grief, all eclipsed by overarching joy. To have a place. To have a name. To have an origin. To _belong_.

"I may not _really_ be your father," he said, "but I'm happy to serve as a stand-in until, you know, it's time to go back. That is, if you want me to. I don't want to presume--" 

She threw her arms back around him with a sob that he took for a _yes_ , and he sucked in his breath at the impact. This time, she'd broken a rib for sure. 

But he never even considered spoiling the moment by asking her to ease off. 

***

Under other circumstances, Ben might have stopped training after the first hour, but it was far too cold to be out in the wind without moving, and he didn't dare explore the island lest he miss his father and Rey's return. He could tell from the way that his mother's eyes kept flickering over to the village to the west that she felt the same way, even if she would never admit it. 

He wasn't sure how he felt about having a sister. He'd always been vaguely jealous of Jacen and Jaina, the way they always seemed to know what the other was thinking, how they were always there for each other. It was different from the way his father was with Aunt Leia, but then again, neither of them had grown up together the way his cousins had. 

And what was Rey, exactly? His sister? His twin? Another version of himself, one that _could_ have happened here if events had fallen out differently? 

From the moment they'd met--was it really only yesterday?--he'd been drawn to her and hadn't known why. He'd thought it was because she was so different from anyone else he'd ever met, and maybe that was part of it. Hadn't his father said something once about being close to Aunt Leia, from the moment he'd first seen her holo? Maybe that was what it meant to have a sibling. He'd have to ask Jacen or Jaina about that. 

Ben had thought _his_ life had been eventful, but it was nothing--absolutely nothing--compared to what Rey had been through. Her galaxy was a scary place, with Uncle Han abandoning Aunt Leia, only to be murdered by his son gone to the dark side, and the New Republic in tatters after system-wide genocide. 

No wonder Rey was so cool. So competent. So _clever_. She had to be, or else she wouldn't have survived. 

And since they were the same on so many levels, perhaps those things were true of him as well. He hadn't been tested. 

_I hope this isn't going to be weird,_ he thought. 

"It's only going to be weird if you let it," his mother said. 

Ben whirled on her in outrage. " _Mom!_ No eavesdropping on my thoughts--OW!" The remote took advantage of his distraction to fire a few choice blows into his back and shoulders before he had a chance to block them. 

"Get better at shielding, then," Mara Jade said, completely unperturbed by his outburst. "You can't reasonably expect privacy when you think so loudly." 

Ben wanted to rub his shoulder to make sure it was still intact, but he didn't dare drop his guard. He glared at the remote, daring it to attack again--only to blink in surprise as his mother stepped in and switched it off.

"Look," she said, pointing up the stairs behind him as the remote fell to the ground with a clatter. 

He knew what he would see even as he turned, and he was not disappointed. His father, and Rey, hand in hand, were racing each other down the steps like maniacs, whooping and hollering as they stumbled and slid down towards the _Jade Shadow_. 

"She gets that from him," he thought he heard his mother say, but she sounded amused as well as resigned by the prospect. Then, louder, "Well, Ben, shall we go greet them?" 

The four of them met at the base of the stairs, Rey and Luke managing to curb their speed to barely avoid slamming into Mara and Ben. For a long moment, they all looked at each other--Luke and Rey still breathing heavily from their precipitous descent--and no one knew what to say. 

_It's only weird if you let it,_ Ben reminded himself, gathering courage. He ruffled Rey's hair the way Jacen so often ruffled Jaina's, and hugged her. "Hey, sis," he said in her ear. "Welcome home. Hope you don't find us annoying once you get to know us better." 

Rey laughed nervously. She probably thought he was joking. Well, she'd figure out soon enough that he wasn't. His parents weren't always right about _everything_ \--

\--but, he had to admit, they did a pretty good job. Especially compared to the alternatives in other dimensions. 

Then it was his mother's turn. Rey hesitated as she approached--perhaps unable to see underneath the severe facade--but something she read in Mara's expression made her soften. The two women embraced with a tenderness that made Ben reach out for his father's shoulder to steady himself. 

"Rey Skywalker," his mother said, her voice shaking with emotion as they held each other. "Even if you weren't the daughter I never had, you are a part of our family and always will be." 

They stayed like this for several long moments, no one willing to be the first to break it. Finally, his father stirred, rubbing the side of his chest as if to ease some unknown wound. 

"Well, then," Luke Skywalker said brightly. "Who's up for some lunch?"


	5. Chapter 5

Luke and Mara spent the bulk of the trip back to Yavin 4 assessing Rey's previous education to date, with mixed results. 

Physical fitness: excellent. Droid and starship repair: incredible. Piloting and navigation: surprisingly good under the circumstances. Languages: Basic, Binary, Bocce, and a handful of miscellaneous droid dialects, both spoken and written. History, politics, and general comportment: poor. 

"Prodigy" was one word to describe her. "Feral" was another. 

"Remind me never to bad-mouth your upbringing again," Mara said later when they were back in their quarters comparing notes. "Your planet might have been an unsophisticated dustball like hers, but at least you had a sense of your own place in the galaxy, insignificant as it was, and you had _social skills_ \--" 

"Some of the other scavengers on her home planet may have helped her here and there, but she's been living on her own a dewback-eat-dewback kind of place since she was a child," Luke said. "We're lucky she's in as good shape as she is." 

The ripple of annoyance that ran through Mara at this reminder made it clear she still took Rey's miserable excuse for a childhood as a personal failing. Never mind that she had been in a different dimension at the time. Luke wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and was rewarded with a slight dip in her irritation. 

"She's a born brawler if there ever was one," Mara went on, leaning into him as she continued. "Quarterstaff is her favorite, but she's got a mean shot with a blaster, and she can make a weapon out of practically anything. In a pinch, teeth and nails are an adequate substitute."

" _And_ she doesn't believe in fighting fair," Luke observed, stroking Mara's cheek, which was already starting to bruise from their skirmishes. 

"That's a plus, though. Fewer bad habits to unlearn," said Mara, indifferent to her own personal well-being as usual. "Fighting fair might be the Jedi way, but that attitude can get you killed in a bar fight if you're not careful. No, she fights to win and that's good. I find that's one of the hardest things to teach.

"Let's see, what else? No patience worth a damn unless she's repairing something. Calm enough on the surface, but angry about everything once you start digging. So much raw talent, so much enthusiasm, but no idea how to go about _doing_ anything with it--" 

"Hey, now, she sounds just like me when I began training with Yoda," Luke said with a laugh. 

"Yeah, she _definitely_ gets that from you." 

"And her stubbornness from her mother." 

Mara flinched and fell silent. Apparently, the jokes could only go one-way right now. Luke sighed inwardly and let go of the matter but not of her. 

"Normally, I would say we take this slow, but we only have three months to work with, so we're going to have to pick and choose here," he went on, eager to change the subject. "If you want to refine her physical skills, I'll take the touchy-feely stuff. She'll need opportunities to blow off steam and exhaust some of that energy before I work with her; otherwise, it's going to be a perpetual struggle to slow her down." 

They both knew it was going to be a struggle no matter what they did. But they were experienced enough now to know how to make the process easier on themselves now--if not the student.

"Good cop, bad cop?" There was a wicked gleam in Mara's eyes at the thought. "And you're letting _me_ be the good cop this time?" 

Luke bent and kissed her ear. "Bet you ten credits she'll never see _that_ one coming." 

She sat up to kiss him herself--on the lips this time. "What did you tell the rest of the family?" she murmured when she finally pulled away. 

"I said we'd run into someone unexpected and they should come to Yavin and see for themselves," Luke said. "I also included a portrait and a copy of the gene test results. I think that will be enough to pique their curiosity." 

"Good. Maybe they'll have some insights about how to fix her galaxy." She closed her eyes and nestled her head back into his shoulder. "And it will be good for Rey to see Leia and Solo again, since she had a connection with them before." 

"Even if _our_ Han and Leia don't know it yet." 

"You didn't warn them?" 

Luke shrugged. "I tried, but don't know if they'll believe me. The biggest question for me right now is what we're going to tell the Academy."

"I've been thinking about that, too," Mara admitted. "If we introduce her as our long-lost daughter to anyone outside the family, she's going to be continually pestered with questions--which are only going to deepen when she disappears in three months, never to be seen again. Rey's resemblance to Jaina is uncanny, but it's a big galaxy, and I don't think anyone will automatically leap to the conclusion that she's related to the Skywalker-Solo clan. Hell, we have some students now with no conception of human genders, let alone kinship ties. They won't even notice." 

"So we tell them..." 

"The truth. Or as much of it as we can. We found Rey on Ach-to, living in the ruins of the old Jedi settlement where she was abandoned as a child. She agreed to come with us, learn what she could, and see if the life of a Jedi is for her." Mara pursed her lips. "And once we hold that Alderaanian-style adoption ceremony to _make_ her family, no one will ever question it." 

Luke laughed in amazement. "You've only known her for three days, and you're ready to go all-in and make it official? With paperwork? I thought you hated paperwork." 

Mara laughed along with him, but her reply was sobering. "I'm never going to have another kid, Luke. I almost died with Ben. The two of you are all I have. And now Rey. I went for so long thinking I didn't need a family, and now I don't know how I managed without it." 

He waggled a finger at her. "Don't make me give you the same lecture I gave Rey." 

"I know, I know. Don't think I don't value everything else in my life. But it's different with Rey. Even if it was another Luke and another me, I still feel like it's my responsibility to get it right." She scrunched up her shoulders. "You know?" 

He nodded.

"And I think _she_ needs it too. That's all she's ever wanted. To be connected. To be a part of something bigger. To belong. Otherwise her longing leaves her open to the dark. And isn't an Alderaanian adoption ceremony how you and Leia got around to publicly identify yourself siblings without dragging Vader into the mix?"

"It was a good idea and it served its purpose. Never mind that the Empire somehow found out anyway. We hadn't counted on the Noghri when we did that." 

"Rey says that Leia's political career was ruined by the public scandal when word got out," Mara said, shaking her head. "I can't imagine it. Reduced to running a pseudo-legitimate military operation while the government _she_ founded stands by and does nothing against those First Order creeps. Tschhh."

"I can't imagine what life must be like for that Leia if she's anything like the one we know. How could she stand it? How could _Han_ leave her? And her son... her son turned to the dark side and killed Han... tortured Rey..." 

"Yeah, she and _our_ Ben both need to get better at shielding," Mara said. "It's getting so loud in the common spaces I can barely hear myself think." 

"There's a lot she hasn't told us yet. Told anyone, I think. I get glimpses here and there when she gets excited or careless, enough to have _some_ ideas about what she's hiding, but... how can she expect to go against this Kylo Ren if she can't even face _herself_?" 

***

The _Jade Shadow_ was a lot nicer than the _Falcon_. Everything in it was sleek and shiny and new and functioned properly the first time, instead of grudgingly when you kicked and threatened it into submission. Rey was envious, especially since Mara snapped at her whenever she tried to touch anything to see how it worked. 

"She's kind of possessive about this ship," Ben said from across the lounge, where he was playing dejarik against the ship's computer. "I wouldn't take it personally. But I also wouldn't touch anything without her express permission." 

Rey's head snapped up from the bulkhead she'd been examining now that Mara and Luke had disappeared somewhere. "How did you--? Were you in my _head_?" 

"What? No! Of course not!" He took a deep breath. "One, I'm not good with that sort of thing, and two--going into someone's head without their permission is just _wrong_."

"That doesn't stop some people," she said stiffly. 

"Okay, but if you don't want people to know what you're thinking, maybe don't mutter it _out loud_ all the time. I have _ears_ , you know." 

Rey flushed. "Oh. Right. Sorry." She knew she should probably stop talking while she was ahead, but she plunged on anyway. "I... I lived by myself for a long time. Got... into the habit of talking to myself, because there was no one else.." 

Neither of them knew what to say to break the awkwardness. So they stared at each other, which didn't help.

Finally, Ben said, "You lived by yourself? Without-- _anyone_?" 

"Yes." It was hard to know what to say about Jakku. For so much of her life, it was the only place she'd ever known--and she hated it. 

"I had to," she said at last. "If I'd left--my parents would never have been able to find me." 

That one of her parents' whereabouts was currently unknown and the other was in self-imposed exile halfway across the Galaxy--and neither of them had ever come for her--didn't bear thinking about. It meant that her loneliness, that her sacrifices, had all been for nothing, and she'd cheated herself with her own naivete. She pushed that aside, braced herself for Ben's inevitable mockery. 

But all he said was, "What was it like?" 

"You don't want to know," she protested. 

"I do. Tell me." He patted the seat beside him. 

"It's really boring." 

Bright blue eyes met hers and she realized he was serious. "Rey. Please. I want to hear it." 

Grudgingly, she sat down across the dejarik table from him. Chewbacca had tried to teach her the basics on the journey to Ach-To, but she still didn't see the point of the game. Maybe Ben would explain it to her later if she asked him. 

"All right, I warned you," she said, leaning back in her seat. "Jakku is pretty much the middle of nowhere--" 

She told him about the desert--the endless expanse of sand, the burning sun, the shifting winds that blew night and day, and the fierce storms that could arise out of nowhere yet drop only a smattering of rain, enough to carpet the dunes with cascades of spinebarrel flowers that withered by the next morning. She told him of thousands of sunrises and sunsets, and the tally marks she made each day to track the passage of time amid the eternal sameness. 

Jakku's only claim to fame was that it was the site of a grand space battle, and the planet's surface was littered with wreckage from the war. There was plenty of materials for salvage, and since there was no industry to speak of and precious little else, the entire planet's economy revolved around salvage. So she'd been able to carve out a niche for herself, trading scrap for food and medicine and whatever else she couldn't scrounge for herself. 

It was a hard life, but she'd been good at it--that was why she'd been able to remain relatively free and independent for so long. Sure, Unkar Plutt, the local scrap dealer, was a thug and a bully, but as long as Rey had delivered what no one else could, he mostly left her to her own devices. It was good to be the best--it took away the sting of isolation, the ache of abandonment, the fear her parents weren't ever coming back like they'd promised. 

And she'd dreamed--of a different life, with different suns, different stars, different everything--but she'd never been able to leave. If she left, she might miss her parents when they finally returned for her. The only reason she'd gotten off Jakku was because she'd been running for her life when she befriended a droid with a map to Luke Skywalker in its databanks--and a massive price on its head. 

"Wow," Ben said when she trailed off awkwardly, unable to think of anything else that could possibly be of interest. "I think you are really brave, to have done all that." 

Rey squinted at him. He didn't _seem_ be mocking her, but she couldn't always tell on the surface. "Brave? I was just surviving. That's one thing I've always been good at. Surviving. Making do. Until my parents came back and--" 

She choked up, clamped down hard to keep the tears back. There was only one rule on Jakku: Don't show weakness. Never show weakness. That was how you survived, by being stronger than everybody else, so they couldn't tear you to pieces. 

He reached across the table for her hand. "Rey--" 

She jerked back, her temper flaring at the _pity_ she detected in his voice, and the dam she didn't even know she was carrying inside her burst. "It's not fair! You and I have the same parents, but _mine_ abandoned me in a wasteland and _yours_ never left! You've never gone hungry or lacked for anything! You've always known who you were, and where you came from! You've always had everything--and I--I had-- _nothing--_ " 

She swung at him, but by then he wasn't where she expected, ducking under the dejarik table to dodge the blow. By the time she'd gotten her bearings, he was already across the room, well out of reach. She stomped towards him, screaming at this strange red-haired boy who was so _like_ her and yet not, about how she would have given _everything_ to live his life in his place and-- 

"You know I dreamed about that as a kid," Ben said quietly. 

Rey staggered, unable to believe her ears. "You _what_?" 

"I mean--it's hard to be Ben Skywalker, the son of the two most famous Jedi Knights of their generation--or maybe ever." He bit his lip, clearly uncomfortable, but gamely plunged ahead while she stood there gaping at him. "Not hard like your life was hard on Jakku--but there were times when all I wanted was to strike out on my own, go somewhere, _anywhere_ , where no one knew my family, so I could find out who I really was--instead of who my parents wanted me to be. So I could be _myself_ instead of having to live up to the legend and always falling short. So I could--make my own decisions and be free. I've always wanted that. I still do. I've just never had the courage to see it through."

It was his turn to meet her gaze squarely, his chin thrust up in a familiar expression she recognized from the mirror. 

"Don't get me wrong--I love my parents. I really do. But if you had found me when you were on Jakku and asked me if I wanted to trade--I would have been tempted to take you up on it. Because _you_ had what _I_ wanted." 

Rey's fury boiled away like water in a vacuum, to be replaced by intense embarrassment and chagrin. "Oh."

"We're not that different, you know, deep down inside." Ben said at last. His cheeks were as pink as hers now. "We're--connected. I didn't live your life, but I understand you. And I think you understand me, if you let yourself. Each of us had what the other craves, but that doesn't make us enemies. If anything, that should make us friends."

"Friends..." Rey's voice trailed off. "I'm not very good with friends. I've only ever had a few in my entire life... and they're all in a different galaxy now." 

"Well, family is _like_ friends, except you can't walk away when things get awkward. You have to stay and see it through." He held out a hand. "Peace?" 

She thought about arguing that _her_ Luke Skywalker had walked away from both his nephew and his own daughter, but decided this was the wrong moment to re-open the debate, especially since Ben's sincerity was evident. So she took his hand and they shook on it. 

Ben's flush deepened. "Oh, and you, uh, might want to work on keeping your thoughts private if that's important to you. You broadcast all over the place, especially when you're angry. I just saw a whole bunch of stuff I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to show me." 

She jerked her hand away. "Hey! I thought you said you didn't go into other peoples' head!" 

"I don't!" he protested. "But it's like you're mad at me for overhearing when you're shouting instead of whispering. Only not with your voice. Especially when I forget and drop my shields." 

"Oh." She tried to parse that last sentence and failed. "You have a way of keeping people out of your head?" she ventured at last. 

"Of course! Is _that_ why you're so... leaky?" 

"Up until recently, I didn't have anybody else to leak _around_ ," Rey said defensively. "And then Kylo Ren--was there trying to get me to tell him where Luke Skywalker was and I--pushed him back, and then I was in _his_ head--and ever since then, I haven't been able to keep him out--" 

"Yup. Better shielding would help with that. Think of it as like shields on a spaceship--blocking all the bad stuff and protecting what's inside. Maybe ask Mom and Dad about that? They're really good with shielding. Way better than me." 

Rey screwed up her face in concentration. "What am I thinking right now?" 

"No idea." 

"Come on, _try it_ ; I just want to see if this works--" 

He shook his head. "Sorry. Doesn't work like that. I don't want to risk seeing more than you're comfortable with showing me. Besides, the connection usually goes both ways if we're not careful. Why don't you just tell me?" 

"Well..." Rey had to admit, he was probably right. She made a mental note to ask his... their?... parents about it later. "This is probably a stupid question, but what is the point of dejarik?" 

This was not a stupid question to Ben Skywalker. He spent the rest of the morning explaining the game's philosophy and mechanics, and even coached her through her first halting game against the ship's computer on the easy setting. By the time they got to Yavin three hours later, she was even starting to enjoy herself. 

***

Rey had thought the greenery on Takodana was impressive, but the jungles of Yavin IV blew her away. Trees towering hundreds of meters above her head, draped in cloaks of epiphytes and lianas in a thousand variations of green. Iridescent butterflies flitted from colorful flower to colorful flower and flocks of raucous birds squawked from the canopy, occasionally venturing forth from their arboreal roosts with a thousand wings flapping all at once. Shadowy and elusive woolamanders howled in the distance, and neon slugs and amphibians stood out against the damp leaves and rocks coating the ground. She drank it all in, a welcome change from the bare rock and chill of Ach-To.

The Jedi Academy was in the ruins of the old Rebel base, which in turn had co-opted the ruins of a temple complex constructed thousands of years early by some long-lost civilization. Limestone pyramids rose up out of the jungle, the exposed faces darkened and weathered by the passage of time. In between training sessions, the complex was filled with students and teachers of all sizes and descriptions bustling about their business, dressed in earth-toned robes and hoods.

Rey's quarters were on the east side of the main temple, but she didn't spend much time there. The wake-up bell for morning meditation was before sunrise, and someone would come to gently but firmly fetch her if she wasn't perched on her cushion in the meditation hall twenty minutes later. After forty minutes of infuriating stillness, they'd chant inscrutable texts about the Force, clean everything, and go to breakfast in the refectory, all without breaking silence. 

Fortunately, the silence only lasted the first ten minutes of the meal, after which they could talk as much as they pleased. She used that time to pepper her dining companions with questions about their lives and training while concealing her own ignorance as much as possible. She suspected that some of them saw through her bravado, but so far none of them had tried to call her out on it. 

After breakfast, they'd change into work clothes and then the real training--as Rey saw it--would begin. Sometimes she worked in groups, and sometimes alone, but always under the watchful eye of either Master Skywalker or Jade. Even though they were her parents--sort of--it was still hard for her to call them by anything other than their titles, especially when others were around.

Master Jade's lessons were challenging, but relatively straightforward: laps around the complex, one-armed handstands, self-defense lessons, sparring. Master Skywalker, on the other hand, seemed to delight in teaching, well, _absolutely nothing_. 

This morning, for instance, instead of actually _doing_ anything, he'd invited Rey to join him on a walk and just... talk. 

"So what is the Force?" he asked by way of opening. 

Rey sighed. This was probably another test, and she was probably going to get it wrong--again--and she wasn't looking forward to it. "It's a power that Jedi have that lets them do things," she said at last. She didn't want him to laugh at her, so this time she didn't mention the floating rocks bit.

"The other Luke Skywalker didn't agree," he countered. "Why do you think that is?" 

_Because he's full of shit?_ "I don't know." 

The Luke Skywalker beside her raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think the Force is about _doing_ things?" 

What kind of question was that? "What else is there?" 

He sighed. "So the Force exists solely for the Jedi to use as they see fit?" 

This was _definitely_ a trap, but she couldn't figure out what was wrong with that statement. "Only if they use it for good?" she hedged. 

"Who decides what 'good' is?" 

No matter how many questions she answered, he always had another one waiting for her. She took out her annoyance on the liana leaning into the pathway. "I don't know. Maybe the Force tells them what to do." 

"So a Jedi does what the Force wants, without questioning it? What if it tells them to do something terrible?" 

Damn him! "The Force wouldn't do that!" 

"The dark side of the Force often speaks to you in your own voice, telling you exactly what you want to hear. How can you tell the good from the bad?" 

Rey pretended she was looking at the ground to keep her footing as they clambered over stones dislodged by vast buttress roots. "I don't know," she said through gritted teeth. 

He nodded, as if her ignorance satisfied him. "When you're calm--at peace--you'll know what to do. Not because something outside of you _orders_ it--but because you know in your heart that it's right. It may not solve everything, and you may not succeed, but when you do act, it will be with integrity and the Force will be with you."

"So that's why all the meditation. To find peace."

Somehow he knew exactly what she _wasn't_ saying--she must not have hid her frustration as well as she'd thought. "Not working out for you, huh?"

"You're really annoying, you know that?" she said without thinking--wincing as she realized her faux pas. 

"Yes, well, that's family for you," Luke Skywalker said with a shrug. "And teachers, for that matter. It comes with the job description. Jedi training isn't so much about what you can _do_ , as who you _are_. Meditation--not-doing--all the stuff you hate--is about stripping away what you _think_ is important, and showing you what _is_. And it takes practice even to _see_ that's what's going on in the first place." 

"Why does everyone focus on the powers and the laser swords then?" 

"Flashy moves always inspire the imagination, make the best stories. And frankly, most of a Jedi's work is extremely boring. Negotiation and conciliation, forgiveness and letting go aren't really the stuff that sells holo vids, even if they're important and necessary work. But just because you _can_ do something doesn't mean you _should_. In fact, it usually means you _shouldn't_ \--or at least think twice about doing it." 

Something still didn't make sense. "Why _learn_ the other stuff, then?" 

Luke's eyes twinkled. "Because training the body is a way of training the mind, each reinforcing the other. And because you never know when you might need to do something flashy. But if you think that's the point of all this, then you're going to be terribly frustrated." 

They walked along in silence for a long time, with only the soft cooing of unseen avians and the click and buzz of insects for accompaniment. Rey thought about what he'd said, her own frustration and impatience stewing within her. 

She wanted to be strong. She needed to be strong. That was the only way she could fight and win against Kylo. He'd overpowered her once before and she was going to make sure that never happened again. 

"Is water weak, do you think?" Luke Skywalker said softly. 

Either she was talking to herself again or her shields needed work. Probably both. "The Force isn't water." 

"Are you sure?" 

She clamped her mouth shut and didn't speak again until they'd looped their way back around the complex and the lunch bell rang, signalling the end of this ordeal. 

"Rey," Luke said, as she turned to go. "The rest of the family will arrive this afternoon if you want to meet them."

Rey froze. She'd known intellectually that this was coming, that she was going to see another version of Han Solo and General Leia in the flesh, along with their children. But she wasn't sure she was ready for it--and what if their son looked just like Kylo--

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Luke said. "They'll understand." 

She shook her head. "No. Where are we doing this?" 

"I'll find you when they get here."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've hinted at it here and there earlier, but this chapter makes it clear that Rey has stumbled into The Best Of All Possible Legends Timelines, in which the Yuuzhan Vong never happened, Jacen is not evil, both Anakin and Chewie are alive and well, and various other digressions from canon. I really have no interest in writing something where I have to fix _that_ timeline along with all of the Sequel Trilogy shenanigans, so unless you read otherwise, assume all of our faves are doing great, living their best lives, and it's awesome.

Rey's assignment for the afternoon work period was chopping vegetables in the kitchen under the watchful eyes of Grake, the six-legged Veubg head cook, along with a handful of other students. Raw charbote roots made her eyes water, but there was something oddly soothing about the steady, repetitive work after such a frustrating morning. 

True to Master Skywalker's promise, he swept into the steaming room barely an hour later, kissed Grake on the Veubg equivalent of a forehead after she playfully swatted at him with a spoon, and extracted Rey from her pile of half-peeled roots before she knew what was happening. He stopped long enough for her to toss her battered apron into the communal laundry and rinse her hands and face before leading her to the docking bay at the bottom of the main temple. 

"Jaina got here first, of course," Master Skywalker said with a grin that made him look two decades younger. "She's always been a speed demon. You two will get on splendidly." 

"She's the one who looks like me?" Rey hazarded. Ben had drawn her a diagram the other day, but it was still disorienting to keep track of so many names and stories. 

"See for yourself," he said, pointing to the X-wing starfighter further down the hangar. 

As if on cue, the cockpit hatch popped open and a figure in a bright orange flight suit emerged. They didn't bother to wait for the droids to bring the safety ladder over, dropping the several meters to the ground with the casual assurance born of long practice. Landing lightly on their feet, they ignored the droids' affront beeps, and pulled off their helmet to reveal-- 

There hadn't been many mirrors on Jakku, but Rey had seen her reflection in far too many scraps of metal over the years to be completely in the dark about what she looked like. She drew in a breath, barely believing the evidence of her own eyes.The resemblance wasn't perfect, but it was eerily close.

Jaina was older than Rey by a good decade, her face open and joyful despite the intensity radiating with every movement. This purposeful yet buoyant energy was evident in the curve of her shoulders, the bounce of her step, the disheveled brown hair unrestrained down her back. 

It was, Rey, thought as the other woman closed the distance between them, an attitude she wouldn't mind on her own face further down the road--if she had the opportunity to choose. 

"Wow, Uncle Luke, never a dull moment with you," Jaina said, tucking her helmet under one arm to embrace him more easily. "And you must be Rey," she added, breaking off to address his companion. "Nice to meet you. I'm Jaina Solo, Han and Leia's daughter. We're identical cousins!" 

"Identical cousins?" Rey repeated in confusion. 

Master Skywalker coughed behind his hands in what she suspected was amusement at her expense. Both Jaina and Rey glared at him, and he subsided. 

"Because we're cousins and we look identical... oh, sorry, never mind. It sounded better in my head. We can hug, if you like." She extended an arm, but didn't venture forward, leaving the decision to engage up to Rey. 

It took a moment for Rey to collect herself enough to respond. Jaina's attitude and her appearance were equally disorienting, and she wasn't quite sure to make of her. No wonder Ben had confused them in their first meeting on Ach-To. 

"Oh. Okay. Hugs are good," she decided aloud, and stepped forward to embrace the other woman gingerly. They lingered a moment until Rey awkwardly pulled away. 

"How are you settling in?" Jaina asked. "I imagine it's quite a change after so much time alone, but I hope at some point to hear how it all came about. It isn't every day that a new family member turns up out of nowhere--let alone one who looks more like my twin than my _actual_ twin does!" 

"Speaking of which, where's Jacen?" Master Skywalker interjected. "I couldn't get a straight answer about whether he'd make it." 

"He and Tenel Ka were on Coruscant when we got your message. Tenel Ka took the _Rock Dragon_ to Hapes, so he had to snag a ride with Mom and Dad on the _Falcon_. Dad's put a new hyperdrive in the old rattletrap, but even the most souped-up freighter is still less maneuverable than a starfighter, so I beat them here--" 

As on cue, a familiar, battered disc-shaped saucer entered the hangar. All three of them covered their ears to block the piercing whine as the ship settled neatly beside Jaina's X-wing. Some things might be different in this strange unverse, Rey thought, but the _Falcon_ , at least, looked much the same as it had on Jakku: a piece of junk. 

First down the ramp was a blue-grey blur, jabbering away in Binary as it zoomed right up to Master Skywalker. Rey caught the phrases "astronomically improbable" repeated over and over amidst a string of numbers as Artoo-Detoo explained all the reasons why the alleged 'new child' was actually a hoax. 

"Hey!" Rey said indignantly. "That's rude! I'm standing _right here_ , you know." 

The astromech droid paused long enough to whistle rudely in her direction before plunging back into its tirade. 

"He's not wrong, you know," Master Skywalker chuckled, patting the droid's head affectionately. "The odds of your existence _are_ astronomically improbable. Yet here you are. Artoo is going to have to learn to cope with it." 

Rey was distracted from the droid's complaints by the quartet emerging from the _Falcon_. An eerily familiar older woman in emerald flowing robes, her hair drawn up in a braided crown, was trailed by a younger, dark-haired man who must be Jaina's twin Jacen, as well as a shiny golden protocol droid Rey vaguely remembered from her time at the Resistance base on D'Qar. But Rey had eyes only for the older man with the easy stride, cocky grin, and dressed in the same pale shirt and dark vest he had worn on the day of his death--

" _SOLO_!" she shouted across the hangar as she pounded towards him, screaming at the top of her lungs as if he were a ghost.

Which, in a sense, he was. 

Han Solo had died before her eyes on Starkiller Base at the hands of his son, Kylo Ren. She would never forget that hellish red gleam as Kylo's lightsaber slammed into Solo's chest all the way up to its distinctive crossguard; the agony on Solo's face as he gasped for a breath that never came, as Kylo yanked his weapon back, and Solo stumbled off the edge of the catwalk into the abyss-- 

Starkiller Base had been destroyed shortly thereafter. Even if Kylo's blow hadn't finished him, there was no way Solo could have survived the explosion. 

But here he was before her, flanked by his wife and a different son--alive. Miraculously, impossibly, _alive_. 

Intellectually, she'd known he would be here--that he was not merely a friend and mentor, but her uncle now. But it was one thing to _think_ of meeting him again, and another thing entirely to witness the resurrection. 

The only problem was that _this_ Han Solo had no idea who she was. 

She half-expected him to block or dodge her tackle, but Master Skywalker must have primed him in advance. Instead, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her even, giving as good as he got. 

"You're alive," Rey chanted over and over again, as if it were a mantra. "Alive, alive, alive, _alive_ \--" 

She hadn't known Solo long, or well, but he'd--been kind to her, and that wasn't something she was used to from a lifetime on Jakku. He'd even offered her a job on the other _Falcon_ , which she got the impression didn't happen often. He might be hot-tempered and reckless--not to mention a poor businessman--but he didn't deserve to die on Starkiller Base. 

Especially not at the hands of his own _son_. 

"So I take it where she comes from I don't make it, huh?" Solo said over her shoulder to no one in particular.

Rey burst into tears.

"Han!" a familiar voice chided in her ear. "You're not helping." 

"All right, all right, I'm sorry," Solo apologized. He patted Rey's shoulder awkwardly. "Hey, sweetheart, don't worry-- _this_ version of me is alive and well. I hope that you saw me go down making sure the people I loved were safe."

The thought of explaining the circumstances of the other Solo's death was mortifying. Rey sobbed harder and buried her face into his shoulder, praying she wouldn't let something slip by mistake. 

"Hey," the familiar voice said in her ear. "You're all right now. If half of what Luke's told us is true, you've been hell and back several times over, but it's going to be all right now." 

"That's what I said, wasn't it?" Solo protested. 

"A different tone and nuance, but yes, that was the gist of it," the other voice said, clearly amused. "Do you know me, Rey, or have you only met Han before?"

Rey pulled her head up from Solo's shoulder to find Leia Organa studying her closely, as if she were a new species worthy of further examination. 

The differences between the two Leias was more subtle than with the two Lukes, or with Rey and Jaina. The clothes and hair were different, of course, but that was only to be expected since _this_ Leia had some important government position, not a ragtag army on the run to command. No, the most striking change was that the Leia Rey had known carried a deep, abiding sadness with her, a melancholy that lingered even in her most spontaneous laughter and no-nonsense orders. _This_ Leia was cool and collected on the surface; the lines on her face speaking to more joys than sorrows, more light than shadows, more victories and fewer defeats. 

"General," Rey said, half-nodding, half-bowing, uncertain whether _this_ Leia would be as approachable as the first one. 

"Now there's a title I haven't managed to collect yet," Leia chuckled. "Maybe someday, but I hope not. I'm done with war and I hope it's done with me." She inclined her head in thought for a moment. "Officially, it's 'Councillor,' but I'd be delighted if you would call me Leia. Or even 'Aunt' if that suits you." 

Rey nodded, still a little shy of this new Leia, but willing to consider the request. Ignoring the protocol droid, which was too busy scolding its astromech friend to notice her yet, she looked around the hangar and realized that someone was missing. "Where's Chewbacca?" she said out loud. "Why isn't he with you?" 

Solo and Master Skywalker exchanged meaningful looks. 

"You really weren't exaggerating, were you, kid?" Solo said at last. "She knows us. Just not ' _us_ ' us." He turned to Rey. "Chewie's on Kashyyyk right now; couldn't make it on such short notice. What else do you know?" 

"You have a smuggling compartment under the floor in the main hallway by the loading ramp, and your ship's computer is _insane_ " Rey said automatically, flashing back to the hectic experience that had been getting the _Falcon_ off Jakku. 

Now it was Jacen Solo's turn to laugh "She's got you there, Dad," he said, stepping out into the light where Rey had a better view of him. 

Jacen was taller than both his parent, with brown hair and eyes the same color as Jaina's, and a crooked grin he had clearly inherited from his father. Rey, who had been expecting Kylo Ren's distinctive nose and cheekbones, let out a sigh of relief as she studied his face and found no resemblance whatsoever. 

"Hiya, cuz," he said, introducing himself and offering his hand. She reached out to take it, but before they could make contact, a fluffy, white-furred rodent popped its head out of his sleeve and trilled suspiciously at her. 

Rey jerked back in surprise, startling the creature. It surged up Jacen's arm to perch on his shoulder, and began to groom itself to a chorus of fussy little wheezing notes. 

"Oh, sorry," Jacen said. "I forgot about Xio. Don't worry, she's harmless--just shy with strangers. She's a rugger from Endor," he added, sensing Rey's unspoken question. "They're popular as pets on Coruscant right now." 

Jaina rolled her eyes. "Picking up strays again, huh, Jace?" 

He shrugged his shoulders, careful not to dislodge his passenger with the gesture. "She was lonely! Somebody abandoned her in the upper city, and she just wanted to go home. Besides, it's not like you'd ever notice any shedding on the _Falcon_ , anyway; the furniture's hairy enough as it is." 

Solo bristled as if he wanted say something, but thought better of it. Rey caught Master Skywalker and his sister exchanging grins. 

Jacen turned back to Rey. "Let's try that again, shall we?" 

This time, they made it through the handshake without interference. Xio sniffed tentatively at her, but didn't abandon her post on Jacen's shoulder. 

"Still a little skittish with new people, but we'll get there," Jacen said, stroking Xio's fur. "I've only had her for a few days, so we're still getting used to each other, but I think she'll be fine. My partner Tenel Ka isn't thrilled, but I think she'll come around with time--" 

Rey couldn't help smiling herself. No, Jacen Solo was nothing at all like Kylo Ren. Adopting abandoned pets was the last thing she'd ever expect from anyone in the First Order, let alone _him_. 

She was going to like getting to know these people. 

*** 

"You know you don't have to go through with this, right?" Luke said to Rey, as they waited outside the main temple for the ceremony to begin. She was twitchy and restless, unable to remain still, and he wasn't sure why. 

Maybe it was dressing up that bothered her? Her silk wrap was cut in the classic High Alderaani style Leia had favored when she was planetary senator, and she'd grudgingly agreed to having Jaina braid her hair into an elaborate crown with a few white spider lilies tucked into the back. Luke was pleased that he had been able to get away with pale tunics, breeches, and boots that were relatively simple to tailor for the occasion. 

"This ceremony won't make you any more or less family to us," he added when she still didn't engage with him. 

"So why bother?" she said at last. 

Luke considered his words carefully. "It's a... gesture," he said at last. "A way of making it official for _everyone_ , not just us. But we wouldn't want you to do it if you weren't comfortable with it." 

"Me?" There it was again, that flare of self-deprecation. "I'm Rey Nobody, from Jakku. Luke Skywalker may be my father where I come from, but you're not him. Aren't _you_ more likely to have second thoughts about _me_?" 

He sighed. This was why he was back in the corner on Rey-watching duty while Mara and Leia supervised the preparations. Han had been with them, too, until they'd roped him into helping the twins with set-up. 

"Symbols are important--even the smallest gestures can have tremendous impact. This ceremony is a wonderful thing to do if you're ready for it, but if it's not the right time, it's better to wait. Mara and Ben and I are ready. But only you can decide if now is the right time for _you_. " 

"You are really obsessed with this idea that family is something we can choose," Rey observed. 

"It is and it isn't," Luke said. "All of us are born into certain causes and conditions we have no control over--but what we do with them is up to us. Every day, every moment is an opportunity to affirm the way things are, or to strike out on a new path. 

"Master Yoda was fond of saying, 'Every instant, the universe starts over. Choose: and start again!' If you wanted to be something different, or you wanted to be a Skywalker in your own way, we'd accept that. We wouldn't force you to do it _our_ way."

Rey frowned. "When you put it like that, it makes it sound like it's not so special to be a Skywalker. What's to stop _anyone_ from calling themselves by that name, then?" 

"It's only been relatively recently that the Skywalker name has, ah, risen to prominence," Luke said--modestly, he thought. "And you're right, there's nothing to stop anyone from calling themselves a Skywalker. But there are those who are born to the name, and those who we invite to adopt it. And you fall into both of those categories."

Seeing her blank look, he elaborated. "You can call yourself whatever you want; whether anyone else chooses to acknowledge it is a different story. You are a Skywalker by blood if not upbringing, and we want to acknowledge you as such, in a way that no one will question. Hence, this ceremony But if it doesn't work for you..." 

"What if I'm not worthy?" 

The question was so soft, he wasn't sure she had meant for him to hear it--but he couldn't ignore it, either. He shook his head. "It's not as if there's going to be a test later, and the Skywalker name rescinded if you don't measure up. That's not how this works. You _are_ worthy, just by existing. By being _you_. Why is that so hard to accept?" 

"But what if I'm _not_ a good person?" Rey countered, crossing her over her chest as if she'd scored a capture in dejarik. 

"The fact that you ask that question," Luke said slowly, "strongly implies that you are. In my experience, true evil never doubts its own righteousness. It's not one hundred percent foolproof, mind you, but it's a good start. And even if you can't trust yourself on this, maybe you can trust me? Or Mara? D'you think Mara would have invited you to do this if _she_ didn't trust you?" 

Rey had to think about that for a while, which was good. He put an arm around her shoulder, and they stood together for a few minutes in silence before Mara and Ben came looking for them. 

Mara wore a white wrap cut in a similar style to Rey's, but with a flowing train, and even more elaborate crown of braids. Ben had taken advantage of the relatively less ornate dress code for men, and his own clothing mirrored his father's. Current Alderaani fashions were much more gender-neutral--and practical--but the classic High styles had been frozen in place for almost as long as there'd been a Republic, adding a heightened dose of formality to the occasion. 

"Well, you two," Mara said, extending a hand to each of them. "Everyone's waiting for us. Are you ready?" 

Luke glanced pointedly at Rey, who nodded soberly. Hand in hand, the four of them walked inside. 

*** 

Back when the temple complex had been a base for the Rebel Alliance, the grand audience chamber had been a place for ceremonies and meetings, as it was the only room capable of holding all personnel at once. It was here Luke, Han, and Chewie had been honored in a victory ceremony in the aftermath of the Battle of Yavin. Now it was the meditation hall for the Jedi Academy, as well as the site of any gatherings or meetings requiring all of the students' attendance. 

Luke had canceled the afternoon meditation to free up space for the ceremony, though he'd made it clear to both students and teachers that their attendance at the adoption ceremony wasn't mandatory. That said, most of them had shown up anyway, curious about the strange new student with such a marked resemblance to one of the Order's most renown. 

Just as on that fateful day over thirty years ago, a radiant Leia waited for them on the dais, with Artoo and Threepio off to one side. This time, however, Han stood beside her, flanked by a grinning Jacen and Jaina. There was no sign of Jacen's latest pet; Luke had _no_ doubt the rugger was somewhere on his person, but hoped Jacen could keep the little creature contained until after the ceremony was over. 

_Do we know what happened to Anakin?_ Mara said in his head as they made their way up the center aisle with Rey and Ben. 

_He and Tahiri had some engine trouble out of Sullust. He said not to wait for him, and they'll be here when they can._

Mara sniffed at this, but didn't comment. 

They paused when they reached the foot of the stairs and waited for Leia to acknowledge them. 

"Who comes hither and what is your purpose?" she said, letting her voice carry across the massive chamber so all assembled could hear. Behind her, Threepio began translating for the students whose Basic was still fuzzy. 

Luke dropped Rey's hand and gently pushed her forward. She only had two lines in the entire ceremony, and he was wondering if she had forgotten them already amidst all the excitement leading up to this moment. 

But she didn't miss a beat--and if her voice trembled, who could blame her? "I am Rey of Jakku," she said. "And I come to claim my place in my heart-family at their invitation." 

Leia inclined her head. "Come forward, then, and be welcome." 

She climbed the stairs and stood on the dais where Leia indicated. That was the cue for Jacen, Jaina, and Han to fetch long, flexible poles with ribbons of three different colors dangling from their tips. They placed each pole in a small metal tube to hold it upright, and assembled them in a loose circle around Rey. 

Leia went briskly through a ritual list of questions, none of which were especially relevant in their situation, but needed to be asked due to satisfy the legal niceties of the complex Alderaani kinship practices. All Rey had to do was shake her head to all of them, and Leia could check them off and move on.

After announcing their names and purposes to the crowd, Leia allowed Luke, Mara, and Ben to join her on the dais for the next part of the ceremony. This was similar to, but nowhere near as elaborate as the one Leia had done with him as preamble to her marriage with Han, to formally solidify their own ties as brother and sister without dragging their shared parentage into the mix. Of course, she was a major figure among survivors of the Alderaani genocide, so she'd had to please vast numbers of traditionalists worried about losing their culture in the aftermath of their homeworld's destruction. 

Luke's job was to weave the sky blue ribbons in and around the gold and green assigned to Mara and Ben. He and Mara had done this before at their own wedding, but they took it slowly and carefully so Ben could keep up with them. As the three of them intertwined the ribbons around the poles, they chanted the same lines in High Alderaani over and again.

" _Kin of my heart, I weave you into our line,_  
Kin of my heart, let the bonds be manifest.  
Kin of my heart, be welcome to our family."

The idea was to create a dome out of the entwined fabrics around Rey, with an opening at the top. Once the three of them had gotten as high as they could comfortably reach, the next step was to pick it up and tilt it on its side. Rey could then climb through the hole and emerge out the other side in a decidedly unsubtle birthing metaphor. 

As she made her way through the opening, Jaina, Jacen, Leia, and Han joined in the chant, now a low drone in High Alderaani. "Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome--" 

All four of them had small containers of pollen in their hands, tossing pinches into the air to drift down onto Rey in dusty swirls of color. The vivid crimson smeared against the white fabric, just like the blood and vernix of traditional birth. 

Previous ceremonies had turned Luke's hair a vibrant shade of pink; he was not looking forward to the frantic scrubbing later today in order to regain his normal coloring. But the look of joy and wonder as a stained Rey emerged from the dome into Luke and Mara's arms sent all other thoughts scrambling from his head. 

He cleared his throat. All eyes were on him, as he spoke the ritual words to formalize the relationship. 

"This is my child, Rey Skywalker," he said in Basic. "Child of my heart, now entered into my line with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities therein." 

Suffice to say it sounded better in High Alderaani, he thought, sensing the puzzled looks from the students in the crowd. Basic didn't have the right words for all of the kinship terms, to Leia's intense annoyance. 

"Welcome, Rey Skywalker, child of Luke Skywalker," everyone on stage said. The crowd joined in a half-second later at Threepio's belated prompting.

Mara raised her hand, still linked with Rey's. "This is my child, Rey Skywalker," she repeated. "Child of my heart, now entered into my line with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities therein." 

The crowd roared its welcome without prompting, affirming Rey as Mara's child. Now it was Ben's turn to grab his sister's hand. 

"This is Rey Skywalker, child of my parents' heart, entered into their line with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities therein, who I also take as my heart-sib, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities therein." 

This was an important point in Alderaani family dynamics - just because your biological parents adopted someone didn't automatically make the two of you kin. There were levels and layers of possible kinship, all of which had to be affirmed by every party involved. Just thinking about the subtleties was enough to give Luke a headache. Leia claimed that everyone on Alderaan understood the system perfectly--but Luke noted the planet had never lacked for either family counselors or lawyers. 

"Welcome, Rey Skywalker, sibling of Ben Skywalker!" chorused the crowd. 

A more traditional Alderaani ceremony would use this as an opportunity to list the extended genealogy and kinship network of everyone involved in the ceremony, but fortunately Leia had taken pity on her non-native audience and skipped straight to the next section. She and Han affirmed Rey as their niece, and the twins proclaimed her their cousin. 

It was a pity Anakin couldn't be here to join them, but it couldn't be helped. _I think Rey gets the general idea now, anyway,_ he thought, stealing a glance over her dazed and flush face, smeared bloody from all the pollen. 

This wasn't a cure-all for her self-doubt and lack of self-worth, but he hoped it would help to ground her, give her an anchor to counter the restlessness, sudden fits of temper, and intuitive skill with the Force that made her such a dangerous combination. Or at provide some ammunition the next time her opponents attempted to undermine her. 

Finally, it was Rey's turn to speak again. She stood on the dais, drenched in red, the late afternoon light shining down from the skylights and the vast window-slits behind them. Even if she hadn't been thoroughly drenched in pollen, the gas giant Yavin blocked the setting sun, filtering everything the color of blood. 

"My name is Rey--Rey Skywalker," she said into the silence--tentatively at first, then gaining confidence as she went along. "Heart-daughter of Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker. Heart-sister to Ben Skywalker. Heart-niece to Leia and Han Organa Solo, and heart-cousin to Jacen and Jaina Solo." She looked over at Luke with an imploring gaze that said, _Did I get it right?_

He winked at her by way of answer. The smile lit up her face and she whooped out loud with that same joy he'd heard back on Ach-To when he'd told her the results of the gene test. He wasn't surprised when she hugged him, smearing his clothes with the same red stains as her own, as the watching crowd filled the room with their cheers. 

They were both sticky and laughing as they pulled away, and his hair was going to be bright pink for _weeks_ if he didn't get to the 'fresher soon. But it was worth it, he thought, as the Skywalker-Solo clan welcomed their newest member to the fold, one after another. 

Of course there was some paperwork to sign after that to make it all official, along with the obligatory family holos, but that was the part that he remembered best.

*** 

Rey couldn't change back into normal clothes fast enough. The pollen itched like crazy, but a trip to the 'fresher in her quarters was remarkably effective, even if the wrap would never be white again. Rey didn't envy the cleaning droids one bit. At this point in the moon's diurnal rotation, the gas giant Yavin took up half the sky and turned everything red, but at least her usual clothes were far less sticky and irritating. 

By the time she made her way outside to the central courtyard, Grake and a crew of helpers had set up tables and a buffet, and the entire Academy had turned up for the biggest party Rey had ever seen--and all for _her_. What seemed like every student present had to come up, shake her hand, and introduce themselves, gushing about how beautiful the ceremony had been while they offered her their congratulations.

Fortunately, no one expected her do anything other than smile and nod, so she set about filling her plate with a vengeance, and let the small talk and stares wash over her while she tried to find a familiar anchor in the crowd. Nothing in the buffet looked familiar, but all of it was delicious--far better than she'd anything she'd ever eaten on Jakku. 

She saw Master Skywalker--no, he was _Luke_ , or maybe she should call him _father_ now, the way Ben did?--across the courtyard and tried to catch his eye. He grinned at her and waved, before turning back to the tall Rodian he was talking to, a teacher she hadn't been introduced to yet. 

Well, that was useless. Rey shook her head. She was going to have to figure out what to call him before it got any more awkward--and clearly he expected her to handle the crowd on her own. She hoped no one expected her to make a speech again--her stage fright during the ceremony where she'd almost forgotten her lines had been bad enough. 

She couldn't see Ben anywhere. Maybe he was still in the 'fresher, washing off all the pollen. It was strange how she could stand in this tumultuous mass of beings, and feel so _alone_ \--

"Hey, cuz," a familiar voice said from behind her. She turned to find Jacen Solo behind her, Xio the rugger perched on his shoulder. "Not a fan of crowds, huh?" 

His tone was kind and friendly, yet something in the bloody shadows from the sky cast his features into a more ominous light. She shied away from his outstretched hand as if it were--

_A red lightsaber igniting out of the darkness. Swirling snow, so cold it burned wherever it touched--hands numb, limbs numb, mind numb, or maybe it was the monster striding towards her, weapon poised to strike--_

"We've met before, haven't we?" Jacen said. His voice was a different timbre from Kylo's, but all Rey could see was Kylo stabbing his father on the walkway at Starkiller Base, Kylo's unmasked face contorted with hatred as he jerked his lightsaber away, Kylo stalking through the snow towards her. "And I wasn't the good guy." 

Rey slammed down on the memory like a blast door under fire. "N-no," she stammered, but her hands moved independently of her mind and she threw her plate in his face. 

Xio squealed a warning, but Rey didn't wait to see if Jacen heeded it in time to duck. She turned and ran through the crowd, panic sending her rolling and dodging round the chattering passers-by, the laughter turning to shouts and confusion in her wake. She couldn't stop, couldn't pause, couldn't think of anything beyond getting away as fast as possible, before anything else happened--

She made it out of the courtyard and around the sides of the Great Temple before she collapsed in a panting heap against the dark stone and sanity slowly returned. What had she just done? Was everyone in her new family going to hate her now for that unprovoked attack? How could she even begin to explain to Jacen what had just happened--? 

Her train of thought was interrupted by a yodel of mechanical delight in the distance. Curious, she followed the sound around the side of the Temple to the hangar entrance where she'd met the Solos earlier in the day. A young man in Jedi robes with sandy brown hair was sitting across from the the familiar blue-and-white dome of Artoo-Detoo, listening intently as the droid babbled excitedly in Binary. 

Both of them turned to face her as she approached, but only Artoo made a rude noise in Binary. 

"Yeah, same to you," Rey said to the droid. "Just because you think I'm a hoax doesn't mean you can't be a little more polite about it. I haven't _done_ anything to you." 

"You'll have to forgive him--he's both possessive and paranoid," the man said, rising to his feet. "A key component of his personality that's saved the day more often than not, as it turns out." 

Artoo muttered another insult, and rolled away into the hangar. 

"Oh, well, he'll come around," the man sighed, and turned back to Rey. From the strikingly familiar features, she guessed this was the missing cousin Ben had told her to expect--confirmed when he introduced himself. "You must be Rey. I'm Anakin Solo. Sorry I missed your induction ceremony, but better late than never, I hope. You look exhausted from all the celebrating, and I have a sublight engine to coax back into shape. Wanna take a peek?

Tearing apart a sub-light engine to troubleshoot sounded way more appealing than going back to the party and dealing with the consequences of her unfortunate assault on her cousin. She nodded. "You're not going to the party?" 

"Tahiri made me bust our asses to get down here in time for the party, but I'd rather have a working ship," he said, and she couldn't argue with that. 

She followed him into the relative darkness of the hangar towards an old Kuat Drive yards D-class transport, where Artoo-Detoo was already aggressively arc-welding on the ventral side. Both Rey and Anakin ignored the droid's irritated whistles as he led her into the ship, to where a panel in the floor had been pulled up to reveal a tangled mess of wires and components. 

"Oh, this is a _mess_ ," Rey said, settling down on her knees to investigate. "You blew out all the repulsor coils in this side!" 

Anakin made a face. "Yes, I know." 

Rey shifted position. "And I think you're going to have to remove all of _this_ \--"

He held up a hand. "You know what? If you're going to talk like that, you can help me fix it. Here." He tossed her a pair of hydrospanners, and she caught them out of the air. "You take that side, I'll take the other one," he said, and the two of them set to work. 

What followed was a happy hour of trial and error in which no one arrived to haul Rey back to the party to confess her crimes. She couldn't read any of Anakin's thoughts or emotions beyond general equanimity and an enthusiasm for starship repair, and the unsettling incident in the courtyard gradually faded. Anakin seemed perfectly happy to try any and all of her suggestions, and didn't seem to mind that their little engine troubleshooting quickly expanded into a more complicated tangents. 

"How are you taking all this?" he asked, midway through what was turning out to be a total sub-light engine overhaul. 

"Overwhelming," Rey said, wiping a grease smear off her face. "Seems like every time I turn a corner, I run into a relative. There are so... many of you. Of everything, really." 

"I believe it. The twins alone get into enough trouble for half a dozen people. Would you believe I was relatively tame in comparison to those hellions? Probably because I didn't have a tailor-made counterpart to egg me on," he added after a moment of reflection. "Mostly, I minded my own business. You'd be amazed at what you can get away with if you're quiet. Most people will completely overlook you." 

There was something about the way he said it that made Rey pause. "You wanted to be overlooked?" 

He shrugged. "I had an... unusual childhood, to say the least. Since my mother was an important government figure-- _the_ face of the New Republic at the time-- _and_ Force-sensitive to boot, people kept trying to kidnap me and the twins to use as pawns for their latest plot. They only ever succeeded a handful of times," he said, far too casually. "Mostly I was a baby and I don't remember it. But suffice to say, I learned quickly the advantage of blending in and keeping my head down to avoid unwanted attention." 

A long pause. He said, with some humor, "I hope you're not regretting your induction into this family now. I hope Uncle Luke warned you trouble tends to follow us wherever we go. Sometimes it's on us, but not always." 

"Believe me, I know all about trouble," Rey deadpanned. 

"Want to tell me about it?" 

She hesitated. "You know where I came from?" she said at last 

Anakin nodded. 

"Well, then." She threw caution to the wind, and plunged ahead. He was going to find out what she'd done to Jacen soon enough as it was. "Your brother reminds me of someone I know from there." She couldn't bear to mention that 'someone' was the other Han's son. "I know they're nothing alike--two different people--but... it startled me. And I threw my plate in his face." 

He didn't even crack a smile--just stared at her with that same level equanimity he'd applied to their repair job. "What's he like, this person, that he reminds you of Jacen?" 

She had to think about that for a moment. Jacen's presence wasn't dark and brooding like Kylo's; it was warm and energetic like his sister's, albeit far more aloof. So that wasn't it. 

"It was just an echo. A memory," she said stiffly, unconvincing even to herself. "I got... captured by this First Order--agent--and sometimes I... remember things I don't want to remember." 

Things like: Kylo Ren's lighsaber at her throat while he held her frozen and helpless in his powers, before throwing her into darkness. Waking up strapped to an interrogation chair, unable to move. Kylo Ren's unmasked face pressed up close to hers, smugly proclaiming _"You know I can take what I want..." as he forced his way into her mind._ She shuddered. "And sometimes he talks to me in my head," she said aloud. 

Anakin wasn't even pretending to work anymore. "Tell me what it's like," he said softly. "Maybe I can help." 

"He worships Darth Vader. I saw it in his mind when he tried to interrogate me. He hears Vader's voice in his head, talking to him. He... desperately wants to... live up to his example." 

"Ah," said Anakin, as if that explained everything. "And not the part about atonement, I take it." 

"Yes. No. I don't know." She couldn't figure out why Kylo kept reaching out to her. Why he thought she would ever join him on the dark side, once he'd decided she was worthy of his attention after all. Not after what he'd done to his father--to Finn--to _her_ \--

She'd told Master Skywalker and Master Jade that he could be redeemed back on Ach-To, when they'd first met. At the time, it had seemed obvious. Luke Skywalker had brought Darth Vader back to the light; everyone in the Resistance knew that. Surely it would be easy enough for him to convince his own nephew to come back, right? Never mind that Kylo's own father had failed at the job; the Force could do anything. It was _magical_ like that...

It was easier when she could hate him unequivocally, when he was a faceless monster in a mask, not a human being hiding behind it. She'd hated him ever since he'd led his troops on an attack on Takodana, ever since she learned what he was and what he stood for. And yet, she'd seen in her brief contacts with his mind how desperately lonely he was, how much he hated himself, and feared his own unworthiness. His unsolicited contacts with her on Ach-To had confused him as much as they had her--and she had picked up more self-pity and self-loathing than he was probably comfortable with. 

And discovering that he was her cousin only deepened the confusion.

"My grandfather tortured my mother," Anakin said after a long silence. "He stood and watched while the Empire destroyed everything and everyone she loved on Alderaan, and he did nothing. She didn't want to have kids for a long time, because she was worried that we might... inherit that taint. By the time I was born, she'd finally forgiven him--enough to name _me_ after him--but it shaped me. 

"I asked about my name all the time when I was younger, and I remember it made her so sad. She didn't show it on her face, but I _felt_ it, and her hesitation made me wonder if I had done something wrong. When I asked her about it, she would only say my grandfather was a good man who made some bad decisions that hurt a lot of people. She wasn't wrong, but I didn't understand for a long time what that meant, even after my father and Winter--our caretaker--explained it to me. 

"But I saw my grandfather now and then, watching over me. It didn't bother me at the time, because I didn't know who the sad man was, or that most people couldn't see him. He never spoke to me, or looked at me directly, just watched me with a sad look on his face, and I never understood why, because he wasn't scary at all. Later, once I'd come here for training, I put all the pieces together, and I didn't know how I should feel about him watching me like that. By that point, he'd either stopped coming or I couldn't see him anymore, I don't know which it was. Otherwise, I might have asked him..."

"Why are you telling me this?" Rey said. 

Anakin looked her dead in the eye. "I used to worry that I would fall to the dark like my namesake. That I wouldn't be strong enough. That was my deepest fear for a long time. It wasn't until I went to a place that was strong in the dark side that I realized the truth: it's our choices that decide who we become, no matter what we're born to." 

She nodded soberly. "Master Skywalker said the same thing to me earlier today." 

"And if this person who troubled you had actually _talked_ to my grandfather's ghost, I think he would know that. Whatever he believes in, whatever speaks in his head--isn't the grandfather _I_ knew, because that Anakin Skywalker realized his choices mattered, and he chose to turn back to the light. Even though it killed him in the end." 

Rey put her head in her hands. "I'm going to have to apologize to your brother." 

"I think he'd appreciate that. But if it's any consolation, I think he'll accept your apology without any hard feelings. He's been through a lot, my brother. We all have." He chuckled wryly. "Getting clobbered by a plate of hors d'ouevres is relatively low on the list of indignities." 

"Is that what those things were?" Rey started, before she realized the implications of his statement. "Wait, how do you know what I--?"

Anakin Solo rolled his eyes. "You were, ah, _noisy_ , to put it mildly. I'd be surprised if the entire moon hadn't heard your shriek, and not with their ears," he said. "Far be it from me to meddle in my uncle's training schedule, but if I were you, I would seriously consider requesting more lessons in shielding." 

She'd had three so far with Master Skywalker, none of which had gone well. "I _hate_ shielding." 

He shrugged. "Say good-bye to your privacy, then. Unless you actually _want_ this Vader-worshipper in your head all the time. Personally, that sounds exhausting. Pass me those auxiliary couplers, will you?" 

The remainder of the engine repair session was silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so many High Alderaani headcanons, but only a handful of them have ever made it into fic! If you liked that part of the fic, you might also enjoy my short fic ["Four Fathers"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15172727/chapters/35185880) for a slightly different approach. 
> 
> Yes, that's Grake from the _Crystal Star_ , thanks for asking! The Luke quote from Yoda's is from _Yoda: Dark Rendezvous_ , by Sean Stewart, which is AWESOME. Leia's reluctance to have kids because of Vader is a major plot point in _Tatooine Ghost_ by Troy Denning. Anakin's trip to the dark side cave is from _Anakin's Quest_ by Rebecca Moesta (go Junior Jedi Knights!) 
> 
> Also, a shout-out to my favorite Star Wars fan film ever, _The Distant Echo_ , which you can [watch on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJDfaurgoA0), and was a huge influence on this fic in general.


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